One Eye One Eye

What I remember with one eye: the severe pain already forgotten, a doctor’s creased scrubs, ÿ ve tiny cracks on white walls, my mother holding me in her arms hastily on the way, the gravel small enough to slip in between lids but large enough to corrugate the membrane on the surface of my retina. Families of cockroaches escaped everywhere once the lights turned on. ° e day sweated without air conditioning.

Waking up with ooze pervading my bandaged eye, remembering how I will remember the days like they performed in my head, and how great it was to only have one functioning eye, since childhood memories are like cotton candies anyway. What is le˛ there sticks to your ÿ ngertips, and you lick it to taste its salty sweetness. Indeed, I had too much fun playing inside with my busy mother in my red-dotted dress, with only my le˛ eye alive. I danced like a pirate, rolling around on the ground, the pleasantly cold light wood ˝ oor. My childish sea roared.

Random Ajummas always said “what a cute little girl” to me in a language I had not yet learned to unravel, but when they opened their mouth, magpies lined up on the wire with their high pitches, especially when I masked my eye. Bit by bit I learned to decipher, as the grinning Ajummas always repeated, uttering the same scripts over and over again. Poking my eyes in the mirror, I thought this might be why the right one has no folds, unlike the other, which is doubled. But I don’t remember how my eye looked before, just like how it does not recall its healing.