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Milky blue orbs glazed over, almost translucent in the pearly white ocean on top of which they floated gently. The liquidated corners filled with the medicine poured into the iris as it dilated, then contracted again. Regular patterns, like a boat rocking in shallow, undulating waves. Like a mother placating a screaming infant.
“I’m tired, Manu. Won’t you stop now?”
The old woman’s voice wavered, ancient ripples forming across the surface and coalescing, reforming, forgetting.
“Do you know why I have to put these eye drops in?”
She shook her head slowly, befuddlement spread wide across a face which was lined with wrinkles. Wrinkles which reminded Manu very much of home, the way they sloped gently, pirouetted around her upper left earlobe and inclined sharply around the sagging chin. She hugged her grandmother tightly, her pashmina shawl dragging across the floor.
“Partial numb blindness, remember? Do you remember what the doctor said?”
But she pretended to stop listening, acting lost in the half finished hand knit scarf she held in her shaking hands. She had been forgetting a lot of things lately. Quiet murmurs crept into her room softly, through the open windows and unbarred door. They caught a hold of her, the murmurs, and told her stories of the past. Her past. Living in the present confused her, made her irate and she found herself tiring of all the doctors. So what if she went blind? When would they finally leave an old woman alone, to her own ruminations?
Finally, as the sun set beyond the horizon, the tug of darkness began. First, her eyes would glaze over and her surroundings would be saturated with a dimmed haziness, as if someone had snapped shut all the lights in her head. Then, voices would stretch into the evening as she mulled over them, and hearing them became a laborious, pondering process. It was then that the darkness would envelop what remained of her field of vision, its firm fingers tugging at her eyelids sharply as they fluttered shut. She fought to remain awake, of course. She always fought to remain awake- because what was under was always worse.
***
Burned. Burning. Burns. It always burned. An invisible inflammation of the eyes, where her waterline thickened and protested against flickering flames which threatened to obliterate everything in their path. She had been thirteen when she got her first pair of glasses, and then, of course, it had been an awful tragedy. When the nurse had poured in the cursed drops, everything stretched before her as the pupil dilated to the degree of extremity. Squeezing her eyes shut did nothing, the burn crawled up her bare legs anfd slithered along the arch of her collarbones, the nook in her elbow, the curve of her chin until she shook uncontrollably. These tremors ravaged her dreams now as her eyes revolted on her after decades. She tossed and turned in bed, the sheets drenched with a cold sweat, the heels of her wizened palms pressed tightly against her eyes. Aqueous humour leaked from beneath the shut eyelids, burning its path down her cheeks, like a boat moving down the river. Like a mother putting down her screaming infant for a moment’s reprieve.