"All the Light We Cannot See" by Scottlynn Ballard

--Quotes and Title by

Anothony Doerr

“How does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

I

I remember when I first realized that people are

Kaleidoscopes.

constructed piece by piece, shard--

By shard. No shade ever melted into another,

no ray of light ever bounced on the same.

I, an ever-evolving, revolving motley

Full of incomparable patterns, incongruent

Shapes.

I was young, clumsy--I had dropped a glass,

And could not help but stare at how many of me

Stared back.

II

I did not know until fourteen (or, was it thirteen)

That, compared to all the creatures in the world, people

see so little of what we call “colour”.

While dogs and cats lead desaturated lives

A bee, for instance, lives life in psychedelic shades

with names we may never know

And colours we many never hold.

So then, if a rose by any other name is still as sweet

Who then decides that the shade is red?

The flower?

The gardener?

The one who holds the bouquet?

III

I fear that I may wait all my life

for a moment I may never be ready to have

We marvel at the patterns we always wish to see

Awed at tessellations and say “I wish that were

Me”

We dream of the becoming,

And never the being,

“And then it finally comes, and are you ready?”

IV

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”

I wish to be the ultimate kaleidoscope

Collections of marvelous, broken glass and

melded-together, half-seamed reflections

That may seem a pipe-dream to some

But I wish to live eternally through words

Even when no one remembers my name.

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Photo Credit: Ms. Loesche