Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

blindness. dandilions.

I remember exactly what everything looked like as a baby. Colours, shapes and lines all floating together somehow. It was so pretty, everything was always so pretty to me. I'd sit and clap and bounce in glee because colours excited me.

Other things excite me nowadays. I know what kind of an adrenaline rush skydiver's must feel, falling from thousands of feet in the air towards the ground. The heights and the wind must get to their nerves at least a few times out of a million. But I'm sure I'm as shocked stiff when I'm here on the ground standing on my own two feet.

I can't see. I've been blind for twelve years now, though I've seen before. I remember smelling dandilions for the first time and deciding they would end up destroying me. When I lost my eyesight, everything that I'd relied on before to be exaclty what I saw it to be, frightened me. Closets gave me claustrophobia, elevators gave me agrophobia, everthing was different. And I don't know why.

Everyday I wake up and debate about whether or not I should open my eyes. I lay under the sheets and all of my heightened senses torture me inside.

My skin is clammy and my body reeks. I can smell my dreams on me in the mornings, my nose is so strong. I lay still and can feel each nerve ending in my chest, hips, fingertips reaching out like tributaries to some great river, empting into a drying desert. My mind scratches with knobby fingers the insides of my flesh and I'm sure if I could see, I would scream at the little insects that end up spending the night with me.

I open my mouth and either taste the morning, or choke on night's leftovers, stale from sitting out on a crusty counter. Still and shivering, I pull the covers off of me and feel around for my houseshoes. The linoleum is dirty. I feel the particles under my toes, despite the roughness of the pads of my feet.

By the time I'm dressed, I feel like throwing up, but I know the stench might kill me. slowly.

So every morning since I was seven, I 've awoken and shuffled through life. It isn't easy being hadicapped, but I'm safer being blind.

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