My love mentions that people see stars bestfrom the corners of their eyes, that conescatch color in the centers, but it’s the rodson the outsides that fetch the dimmest portionsof the visible spectrum—and I am forcedto reconcile with the fact that something so roundas vision still pushes people into cornerslike those I drive by in the hood, and wonder:if spacetime had bent me a different pathI could be a man or a mural on some concretepatch like these, and that either way I’d bepainted away eventually. I’m forced to considera future son, half white, and whether or notto ever call him my nigga; that if I ever did,something somewhere between us might breakjagged forever, push us to the other sidesof rooms, a hypotenuse of hypotheticalsalways between us. I’m forced to considermy child’s heart like a comma, caught up in clauses,murmuring a steady syntax the way a ghostdrags its lips over everything unspokencaught in its chest, a soul full of expectationsnever met; I’m reconciling how black and whitethe edges of most things are, the steady strainof looking into every corner of the sky and neverfinding a black constellation—already knowingthe brilliance of stars is a billion yearsworth of old news; to reconcile with my friendconfessing he never expected to make it pasteighteen, and I don’t know what’s harder to believe:his confession or the doctorate diploma he thumbson the corner of his thirties—to reconcile with the elderly who hear my poemsand come to me, stumbling their way towardsI don’t see color—and I can’t tell if it’s glaucomaor Glaucon sitting in the center of their lenses,spinning the ring of Gyges on his finger; andtheir mouths like a heart pulsing so petulantlyI take their hand to my chest, tap out a sweet staccato:Do you see me? Shut your eyes—I am either sideof that which blinds you.