Phosphene

The lightning hit me in a wave, and I drowned in the brightness. And the fear propelled me. Blinded, short-breathed footfalls crashing across the heavy earth. The white, electric light had passed through me quick, stealing my sight as it left the empty room that I had let myself become. Doors like walls. No knobs. No hinges. And without my ability to see, what was left was muscles and lungs. Inhale and run. Anything to vanquish the unearthly light filling me. The blazing, electric current left me with a ghost image pressed tight against my eyes. Sharp fissures of light cutting through my familiar shadows. The nerve-ending memory of light. The insult to my injury. And me trapped inside with no way out. And panic squeezes my eyes shut to hide the phantom cloud flooding my lack of vision. And the apparition sits inside me. Me, all full of mirrors reflecting what I can’t quite escape. Me, desperate to abscond. Me, tearing unseeing, through the labyrinth of my caged in mind. Amaurotic. Sightless. Taking breathless flight. Haunted by an eidolic sun that I will never quite reach on these broken wings. That I will never catch with this bone-weary body and collapsing lungs.