NANCY TAYLOR EVERETT

Juliet and Heaven

           And yet I wish but for the thing I have . . .   II.ii

Every morning Juliet hunts through the paper
for stories like the one about
a man who suddenly gets back
the sight he lost so young
he didn’t know how to miss it.

She imagines what it is like when he wakes up,
a king caught outside his own castle,
invaded by his own barbaric eyes—

or the middle of the night
when you throw on the light, but
can’t bear the trample of nameless shapes and colors,

or maybe it is nothing like that.

The cure was impermanent;
now he only vaguely makes things out.
But this is fine with him, he can
see better that way.

Juliet wonders what this is like, perhaps
a plastic azure world of pillows and curves,
a little boring, like heaven used to be.