By Cathy Ulrich
Today, I am tilting my head close-eyed up toward the sky till I can find the sun by its heat on my face, its burn through my eyelids.
What are you doing? my girl says to me.
Learning to be blind, I say.
Why? she says.
I had an uncle, I say, but I don’t say how he was shot in the head, how he lay on the sidewalk face up to the sky, said I can’t see, I can’t see, shadows of bystanders all around him.
My girl kisses the back blade of my shoulder.
Come inside, she says, there’s lunch, and I hear the closing of the door behind her when she goes, open my eyes slow to the sun, stare so long it is like I haven’t opened them at all.
Cathy Ulrich is a writer from Montana. Her work has been published in various journals, including Gone Lawn, Passages North, and Black Warrior Review.
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