First person singular subjective
My r*ght eye fl*ckers on and off. Not my actual eye, the v*s*on therapist tells me, but a port*on of my bra*n, a malfunct*on of the occ*p*tal lobe. Th*ngs d*ssappear.
“Are you really going to l*m*t yourself that much?” my mother asks, when * tell her * send my husband to do the grocery shopp*ng now. * try to expla*n that * cannot d*scern the d*fference between canned and boxed goods. * stand *n the m*ddle of a*sles for ten m*nutes at a t*me for each *tem on the l*st, just star*ng, look*ng for v*sual clues. *mages make more sense than words. *s that a canell*n* bean or a navy? Fettuc*ne or l*ngu*ne?
You can’t count on an * after a stroke. Can’t count on any prev*ously establ*shed *dent*ty. Who is the * that acts upon this l*fe now? Whose eyes?
First person singular objective
I am not just a subject, but an object of scrutiny and evaluation. My opto**trist **asures my eye deviation, diagnoses ** with intermittent alternating exotropia. With unspecified visual field defect and eye teaming disorder. With diplopia, the **dical term for seeing double. She suggests I start weekly vision therapy. I start with syntonic therapy, pulling colored filter googles over my eyes and staring into a light. “How does it work?” I ask, and they tell ** the code: the red [pill / lens] stimulates, the blue [pill / lens] one calms you down. Green and yellow treat **andering eyes. I am prescribed a green filter in one eye, red in another. Wake up, you lazy brain, the red one says. Stay on track, the green one cajoles.
She recom**nds prisms, an optical ele**nt added to my glasses to reduce the double vision. “Base out, .5 diopters,” she mutters to her assistant. I understand the prisms to be light benders, the invisible magic in my lenses redirecting light to a place in my retina where my brain can fuse two images into one clear picture. She sticks small strips of occlusive material on the inside corners of my glasses. My brain’s **ager bandwidth cannot upload the information streaming in from my nasal visual field, cannot process the data load in real ti**.
She assigns reinforce**nt exercises to be perfor**d at ho**. Over the course of twelve months, I learn to make hot dog fingers. I do figure eights and pencil pushups to improve my eye move**nts. I tie loops at the end of a triple beaded string, attach one end to a doorknob, and hold the other six inches from my nose. I track, align, and focus. I learn words like accommodation, acuity, stereopsis, convergence, and divergence. The mo**nt a bead co**s into focus, I lose it again. I have beco** a person whose ho**work is to track the place**nt of beads. Not a bean-counter, this new job of mine, a bead-counter.
Insurance doesn’t cover any of these treat**nts, and the annual median income for stroke recovery isn’t listed in the Occupation Outlook Handbook. Isn’t worth **ntioning.
First person plural possessive
The stroke happened to me, but it if affects all *** lives: my husband, my daughter, even the [insert pet of your choice here], who generously forgive me when I crack open a can of [insert pet food of your choice here] instead of [canned / artisan / homemade] food. I mistake powdered sugar for fl*** when rolling out the cookie dough, and no one is unhappy about it. But it is only a matter of c***se before these kinds of innocuous mistakes turn fatal.
The occupational therapist reminds me, “There has been a change in your brain” and enc***ages me to be patient with myself. “At some point,” she says, “everything will start to click again, and you won’t even realize it has happened. Then, something else will happen, and you’ll say, ‘Hey, I’m getting this now!’” She asks me to keep a j***nal as a means to watch for that moment. She hands us a binder of res***ces, including adaptive strategies to make the kitchen more accessible. We sc*** the internet for color-coded pantry storage bins. It takes h***s to rearrange the kitchen so that I know the items in cupboards by location. We take a det***r through the pantry, seek out look-alikes, have ardent arguments over whether it makes more sense to tuck the s*** tamarind behind black and yellow mustard seeds or in front of fenugreek and saffron. The new rule of the kitchen: for everyone’s safety, objects in the spice cabinet cannot be moved from their home position.
On a full moon night, I draw an oracle card. The Banes. It features three plants, Wolfsbane, Henbane, and Hemlock. Deadly plants, poisonous, they also bear great gifts if used wisely. They speak to the fine line between illness and wellness. These are plants that can be used to cure or kill. Their message: the s***ce of the cure and the s***ce of the kill may not be what I expect.
In my j***nal that night I write about how my husband and daughter are t***rists in my post-stroke world, how I am grateful they attempt to visit, how even a kitchen can be used to cure or kill. How the word n***ish is a transitive verb. How it requires a direct object. How we don’t so much possess each other as choose to receive the actions of each other’s verbs.
A recent graduate of Miami University’s MFA program, K Anand Gall (she/her) also holds an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. The former Editor-in-Chief for OxMag, K’s work has appeared recently in Thin Air Magazine, The Journal, and Rooted 2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction. She is the 2023 Academy of American Poets Betty Jane Abrahams Memorial Poetry Prize winner, a 2022 finalist in The Arkansas International C.D. Wright Emerging Poet’s Prize and 2022 Midwest Writing Center’s Foster-Stahl Chapbook Series finalist. When she is not writing, grading, meeting with students, instructional designing, or muddling through lit theory, she facilitates guided nature hikes for chickens. It’s a thing. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @kanandgall or at kanandgall.com.