Rosy Intent
The musings of an optimist
Thursday, I am thrown through glass unexpectedly — my eyelids cut on impact.
This is Italy and I am a stranger. Nevertheless, new skin is found and meticulously sewn back on — darned patches of tiny stitches that hardly scar and I am more than grateful…
Forty years on, my embroidered eyes have become gossamer bags containing scented rose water, colouring my vision — gifting me both a rosy past and a future full of sunrises.
Was I born an optimist — or has a near-death experience at a formative age forged the individual I have become?
I write this on the soft beach that is my home, surrounded by surring sounds lapping — warmth on my back — would I have made it here without the need to escape the scrutiny of my peers who, on realising that one blue eye is red and half the size of the other, announce the fact to me, loudly in a crowd — always in a crowd — as if they were the first to discover this anomaly — as if I didn’t know!
Well-meaning people — people with two whole eyes and scar free aspects. I have collected all of their surprised looks, concern, interrogation and guilt. I bag them up — keep them to fuel my quest for a good life — the one where I am needed, where I make a difference — the one where I can wear sunglasses most of the time because some of the stitches are starting to fray…
