poem

Judy Brown: FIRST PRIZE Letter to My Optician

Dear Tom
I will soon feel you tightening the frames
from which you add or subtract lenses, hear
your breath as you peruse my aqueous humour
through fluorescein. It was Christmas
morning when I started to yearn. Just then
the neighbours were galloping in inflatable
horse-suits on Red Post Hill. I felt like crying
at the mum’s face when the three returned,
their novelty equines starting to deflate. I love
the way you look on the bright side, never mention
my minus 14 vision, saying the backs of my eyes
are marvellous despite it all. I fell asleep
to my parents’ two televisions and the house’s
sound effects – silvery CFCs chuckling
in a fridge, the kettle’s huff and click, thunder
troubling the far side of the Rio Grande.
That night I dreamed, and I believe it malefic,
that the Autobank dispensed a Hong Kong
dollar note in substitution for a crisp twenty.
But I want to talk about food, how I added grated
onion and garlic to the packet Paxo, the huge
sweetbready joy of the Holland & Barrett
chocolate brazils, how we compared two
types of stilton and ate the better oatcakes.
I could go on, but I’ll see you soon, and
your ziggurat of dwindling capitals, your machine
for testing if parts of the retina have started
to flunk. I hope I have not fallen farther
into the red, and that things will be different
from how they have been for some time.