New Eyes, Old Fears

Even with my dark glasses, raindrops on the peace lilies shimmer as I emerge from my apartment to the dank scent of weed from my neighbor’s apartment. Now in his late forties and chronically unemployed, Miguel lives with his mother.

A door upstairs slams. Miguel descends the stairs and walks on the opposite side. Has he seen me? He usually greets me with a gravelly “Buenos dias” before he sits on the steps and puts on his rollerskates.

From above, Miguel’s mother screams something in Spanish and then in English--now, I understand--about getting a job instead of roller skating. Miguel puts in his earbuds and cranks up the volume. The music is so loud I hear Cardi B’s raspy alto from where I'm standing near the laundry room.

Water from the outlet pipe has leaked from the washing machine and pooled in front of my garden. A mother duck and her ducklings waddle past me to drink the water. The last time I saw them, they were fuzzy yellow balls.

My hands trembling, I remove the glasses that my optometrist gave me after the surgeries on both eyes. I want to see the world with my new eyes, but I’ve been scared to remove my glasses. I remember the nurse’s warnings about the potential dangers to my unprotected eyes—dust, debris, unseen perils. I cannot bear the thought of inviting further complications. I suspect there might have been some complications during my second surgery that neither my doctor nor the nurses told me about at my post-operative meeting. But my wife noticed the bruises under my eyes. They are not pretty.

My left eye looked like when I was in high school at Jamaica College, and a classmate—for safety's sake, let's call him George—punched me in the eye. We had been in the common room during our free time between classes, exchanging jibes and laughing as if everything was alright. They weren't.

I went home after playing football and slept soundly. The next morning, as I stepped through the door to the common room, I was sucker punched. George was towering over me, his face twisted into a scowl. I put my hand to my face when I felt blood dripping down my face, splattering into a star on the wooden floors. He was screaming about how I had taken a joke too far. How was I to know that he was angry when he was joining in on the jibes? How was I to know he couldn't take a joke when he had been teasing everyone in the group?

Miguel grunts a goodbye, and I watch him glide towards the lake encircled by glistening palm trees. Has it always been this bright after the rains in April?

As I turned to go back into my house, the brood of ducklings hurried toward me, chattering all the way. They remembered the last time I fed them. Almost in unison, they fluffed their downy yellow, brown, and black feathers. Even though the mother duck senses I would never harm her offspring, she watches me anxiously. I know the feeling. I used to watch my children in the playground the same way. I promise the mother duck will bring them food the next time, and then I spot the starburst tree I planted six months ago. It has sprouted at least four new saplings, their green and purple leaves twisting toward the sunlight.

After the lockdown

opening my door to find

a moth’s chrysalis.