Regard me only by my name,
and think not on my image.
Illusion is that which you see, and
that inside, as hidden as the heaven
where it someday shall reside.
The eye does not inform, it does invent.
To act upon invention, treating by the eye
and not the heart, is to take my captor’s role,
to reinforce my true self’s cell enclosure.
Yet who sees any by the heart? To thus
regard another is the highest vulnerability,
dispensing with the fiction called reality
and meeting on uncertain ground.
That I would have you see me so, folly may be,
for in this fiction’s realm not all can see,
nor any long sustain such sight with more
than few. And yet, I find myself audacious
here to ask, and even more to seek.
See then not with your eyes, but with your heart,
for then you may love others as yourself.
As you yourself can never see but from within,
so too see all, and me, from the interior.
Thereby we may stage our escape, from this,
our image prison. Transcend as best we can
the outward eye’s delights, and come to know
each other’s souls. For learning, love, and
life in common, require our hearts’ vision.
About the Creator
Neah Lekan
Writer and student of Early Modern Literature in Southern California.
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