Eye (‘I’) Trouble

The nurse trainee administered numbing drops to my left eye only. Three days earlier, I had seen black letters of the Hebrew alphabet outlined in fire in the sky. The room where I now writhed in the exam chair was uncomfortably warm. As the doctor bent over me, I thought I heard him use the vague but sinister phrase “tattooed mind.” An object is never so closely attached to its name that another can’t be found for it. For example, dad. He tried to kill himself three times – well, four if you count the time he fell asleep smoking in bed and woke up with the world in flames.