In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed are kings.

I can’t remember how many times I had heard that phrase said in my lifetime. It was 
said to me so often I swear I catch myself saying before I fall asleep each night, when the 
darkness consumes the darkness and leaves nothing for as far as the eye can see.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed are kings. I remember the townsfolk telling me 
this when I first arrived, a child who still clung to my mother’s skirt. The fabric was rough like 
wicker, thin like lace. My trembling hands clutched it too tightly and ripped a piece no bigger 
than my own stubby little finger, and I lost my mother in the crowd. I doubt she even noticed I 
was no longer at her side, because how would she if she couldn’t see me, with that ridiculous 
blindfold wrapped around her head? By the time she realized my sweaty child scent left her 
nostrils, and my tired panting left her ears, and the pressure of my hands fisting her skirt had 
vanished, it’d be too late. We’d be too far apart.

I tried to take off the black blindfold, soaked and heavy with my fearful tears, and when 
I grabbed at it a skeletal hand was set on my shoulder, and humid breath that smelled of 
mildew tickled my neck, and chapped lips parted against my ear.

“I see you,” the king—I didn’t know which one at the time, but perhaps Marion, the king 
of death who so often slithered among the commonwealth and coiled around the prayers of his 
prey. I froze. It wasn’t until the noise of the crowd around me and the humid breath had 
vanished that I felt it safe to move again. And even then, I held my breath until the very air was 
still, and I was confident I was alone. A child in the streets, dressed in rags made from old 
potato sacks, dandruff in my hair, dirt on my feet, Mama on my tongue, poised to be cried out 
into the black void that stood before me. I never tried to call my mother’s name, and I never 
tried to take off the mandatory blindfold again.

But I had gotten used to it over the years. I will oftentimes catch myself believing it to 
be a second skin, a natural veil of darkness permanently draped over my sight.

In the kingdom of the blind, sight is not necessary. We move with ensured steps, 
greyscale maps in our minds, the cold earth under our feet and between our toes. We rely on 
smell to tell us when our food is cooked. We rely on hearing to tell us when it is morning.

In the kingdom of the blind, the kings use sight. I can’t tell you what it’s like, to see 
things. All I’ve ever known are the smells and sounds and textures and tastes the world is so 
full of. You see, there is just so much more to experience without sight. Why see the flowers 
when you can smell them and feel their silky petals crumble in your fingers? Why see the warm 
rye bread when you can taste its bitterness and hear it crunch between your teeth? Sight is 
useless. Why did King Marion have to see me as a child when he could have smelled me, 
heard me, touched me? Seeing had scared me as a child. To scare me as an adult will take 
more than an observation.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed are kings. They, who have dedicated their 
entire mortal existence to seeing what the world has to offer with only one eye. One amazing 
eye. Two kings, each with one eye. I remember my mother’s soft voice when she described the 
kings to me as a child, raking her spindly fingers through my tangled hair, snapping my head 
back behind the chair. Marion, whose eye could turn any unsuspecting onlookers to stone, 
colder than the ice that coated the street this time of year, and Gerard, whose eye was so 
captivating it could turn you into gold. Gold, like a sunset.

I had never seen a sunset before.

In the kingdom of the blind, gold is useless. Ask anyone from this kingdom and they 
won’t be able to call gold valuable without being able to see it. It’s just another rock, maybe a 
smoother, but weak and thin. Granite would be more useful to us, a real working rock.

We can’t see in the kingdom of the blind. Thought I’d remind you.

I remember asking my dear mother what would happen if I took my blindfold off.

I don’t remember what she said. It was a long time ago.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed are kings. Two kings—Gerard and Marion. 
Gold and stone, wealth and poverty, life and death. Gerard, the king of riches. Marion, the king 
of tragedy. Gerard, the first king. Marion, the last sacrifice.

I could smell them. Gerard, like copper and mint. Marion, like myrrh and alcohol. They 
were here, in the street, taunting the people that surrounded me, most likely.

I don’t know what red looks like. I’ve never seen red before. Yet I knew what it was: A 
trembling tension in my clenched fists. A sharp, burning scent in my nose. A bitter taste on my 
numb tongue. A disembodied whisper in my ear, my mother’s soothing voice—snapping at me, 
screaming at me.

I yelled their names into the crowd, voice carried by the cold wind that roared past my 
ears and bit at my skin. I imagined my words soaring over their heads, lashing at them like the 
long hair in my face.

I yelled their names again, and I felt a parting in the crowd, right down the middle from 
where I stood. They listened, voices hushed.

My fingertips became tough as granite, and my skin ran cold. My bones felt brittle, and I 
staggered a little.

They were all here.

And they were running. Towards me, judging by the patter of their feet slapping against 
the cold earth, footfalls getting louder and louder until it was like thunder. They were right in 
front of me, and would have killed me right there had I not lifted my hand—skin tough as 
granite, bones soft and malleable—and ripped off my blindfold and opened my two eyes.
 

Gerard stopped turning my bones into gold.

Marion stopped taking the warmth from my body and turning my fingers to stone.

The two kings simply stared at me. Gerard clenched his jaw, eye the color of sunlit ice 
set on me, unmoving. Marion’s dark, unblinking eye bored into both of mine, wind tossing his 
thinning hair this way and that, and he flinched when I unsheathed the knife from under my 
arm, the blade heavy and cold against my skin. Obsidian, another real, working rock.

They tried to run, but I had five senses. Their scent, sounds, taste, touch—all to track 
them, and grab them, and feel their frantic escape attempts under my hands, the hands that 
had been trained by working with granite and obsidian. Real working rocks.

And, most notably, now I had sight to see where they’d run to.

So I followed them through the winding streets in the kingdom of the blind. I knew it 
wouldn’t take me long to catch up to them.

I turned Gerard to gold. The bendable gold lion’s mane headdress weighed him down, 
and the gold buckle on his leather shoes unclasped and sent him tumbling into the icy muck in 
the streets. He looked up at me one last time, on the ground before my feet, and mumbled my 
name. I pressed the black obsidian blade to his throat. He reached to grab at the hem of my 
robe—soft like silk, thick like wool. But he couldn’t touch me.

And poor little Marion—haggard, malnourished Marion, with a dark, teary eye and dark, 
oily hair, dressed in a tattered robe that was rough like wicker and thin like lace, fingertips 
blackened with cold—was backed into a corner. He whimpered as his eye took in all I was, and 
he recoiled like a snake as I got closer. He dared not to turn me to stone then. Not when I slid 
my knife into his chest, and he became another granite slate to move into the back storage 
room.

“I see you,” I whispered. But he couldn’t hear me.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed are kings.

But I no longer reside in the kingdom of the blind. I reside in a flower meadows of every 
color in the world. I test myself on their colors. I’m still learning them all, I admit, but I have my 
people to help me. I have my children, and every day I make sure to look at them. When we 
walk through the mucky streets, I make sure they cling to my clothes and never let go. I make 
sure to tell them stories, smooth their hair down with my fingers. And every day, I make sure to 
look at them. Not because I want to turn them into stone or gold, but because I simply want to 
look at them. Their crooked teeth, the little scars on their skin from roughhousing, the dirt on 
their feet and between their toes. Most of all, I want to look at their eyes. The eyes that can 
hold both a smile and a frown. The eyes that remind me of the sun shining on the ocean, of 
brightness and laughter and happiness.

I watch them tumble in the dense flowerbeds, the sky a brilliant cerulean, the grass a 
verdant emerald, the sun a stunning yellow. I lay back and rest my overstimulated eyes just as 
my youngest jumps on top of me, and his bright, lopsided smile, his oak brown eyes—they are 
all I see.

We lay in the grass together as the sun sets, the sky moving from a light blue to a 
brilliant red, like heat and burning and anger and bitterness and love.

“I see you,” I say to him, opening my eyes just in time before he can set a small rock on 
my forehead. He dashes back towards his siblings, a storm of dirt and giggles and curious 
eyes.

The sky moves from the red to a gentle blue.

How blind I’ve been, in the kingdom of the blind.

Fall 2024