Jason Schwartz

I didn’t know I couldn’t see
until the social studies teacher
phoned Mom about my index finger
curled to make a pinhole.

Minus-six-diopter glasses
warped the fifth grade hallway
like a Mercator projection, swelling

googly-eyed
sticker-footed pom-poms 
in my oil-smudged periphery.

Populars pressed them to their lockers
or held them in their palms,
microfibers feathering their lips.

Heather was first to own the rainbow
because her mother ran the snack shack
that traded them for lunch money.
My mother emptied bedpans.

But they propagated uncontrollably,
pushing out the ceiling tiles.
We tunneled

single-file through the cotton thicket,
clawing over
hairless limbs.

Glasses skittled. 
I kept my eyes 
trained on Heather’s Birkenstocks.

 

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JASON SCHWARTZ is a crypto tax lawyer who grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Washington DC. His work has appeared in Dodging the Rain and Toasted Cheese.