Blind as a blind man with a picket sign.
Frozen in time like a photograph.
The picket sign doesn’t matter.
Neither does the man.
The flowers gather in shelter for the winter.
Some freeze to their loved ones
with the first winter chill

A glass is poured with wine,
and a celebration is decided.
The young boy will one day
marry the young girl, and there will be dancing.
A glass is crushed and people
celebrate love and new beginnings.
Outside, the town crier
cries out, “I am out of tears”
The subway seems to know itself
better than its patrons do.

Dining in the city tonight
is a famous debutante.
She looks like sapphire and roses
fucked and made wholly love.
She smells like vanilla,
and she wears sunglasses to hide her sad eyes.
A starlet, a somber singer, sad tonight.
The man asks her why she is sad.
She asks him why he is holding up that picket sign.
The blind man can only measure her beauty with distance.
She is happy that he is blind.
“What’s on your picket sign?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter” he says.

And she says, “Yeah, nothing really does.”
And she asks him to sit down and rest his legs,
Tthat he has had a long day, and now it’s time
To unwind.

He hasn’t unwound in a long time.
He says, “No, I must be going.”

“The world isn’t going to save itself,” he says.
She says “i am only in town for one night,
and i am lonely and sad.”

He sits down, and says, “why are you sad?”
She says, “I’m sad,
because I don’t know who I am.
I’m blind.”

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His third book, Train of Thought 2: Almost Home is available now at the Oddball Book Store.