[ WP ] Your doctor has discovered cancer in both of your eyes . Tomorrow , you are having life-saving surgery to have them removed . Describe your final day with vision before you go blind .

I will no longer see 
 
 The stretch marks on my thighs 
 
 Like scoldings from a headmistress 
 
 Who knew I would not stop on my own; 
 
 I will no longer see pale, pocked skin 
 
 Weeping off my jowls and hips 
 
 And scars that grow like lichen 
 
 In the places I would stick in the scissors 
 
 To cauterize anxiety; 
 
 I will no more squint before smudged mirrors, 
 
 Sculpting threadbare hair into ponytails and half-measured bobs 
 
 That never resembled what I thought I should be; 
 
 I have wept a final time 
 
 Over chartreuse dresses on red carpets, 
 
 Bullies, hugging in nightclubs in Hudson 
 
 Or educating dusty Kampala children in Inkwell, 
 
 And porn stars with tidy vaginas and tits posed out and up, 
 
 Like a huntress atop a ruined capital. 
 
 I do not need to see anymore. 
 
 I already know the distance from fridge to bed, 
 
 The roughness of every linoleum tile on bare feet, 
 
 Or how to puke in dark bathrooms and never miss, 
 
 Like a carnival barker who does not share 
 
 How the ring toss is unfair. 
 
 I do not need to see anymore. 
 
 * 
 
 The doctor ( she wore a white lab coat 
 
 Over a thin merino sweater that showed her elegant collarbone ) 
 
 Said it is a mystery, to her, what causes it. 
 
 But I know how eyes grow furious 
 
 Like gorillas kept in Northern city zoos 
 
 When everything they see surpasses everything they are chained to. 
 
 * 
 
 The blind, it is said, earn sight in another way, 
 
 Become prophets and oracles, but this 
 
 Is succor for cowards. 
 
 The blind do not learn to speak the truth to the world. 
 
 They hide the evidence so they can lie to themselves.
