before they gave me glasses, 
the world looked much like this: 
a bright and mystic disarray, 
a warm chaotic bliss -- 

but then i saw the details, 
the world turned outside-in -- 
for there was something sad, i think, 
in just how blind 

i'd been

she hands to me a picture, 
she's made, at five years old, 
and there is nothing finer -- 
nothing of silk, or gold, 

could mean as much, or be as much. 
you know what i speak of: 
there are no colors brighter 
than those made out 

of love

in art class, we learned gouache. 
the hues were bright and bold, 
when i was young, so very young, 
and life was red and gold, 

and purple, yellow, maybe green. 
it's seared into my brain -- 
in art class, we did gouache, 
and colors fell 

like rain

in the cold, the fire warms, 
in the night, the light shines through; 
all the colors make the spectrum, 
one or two just will not do -- 

here upon the brightways travel: 
though the shapes may now seem strange, 
where there's light, there should be vision; 
we can take it in, and change

she came to me with green, 
but i had only blue; 
as colors flow and blend 
we felt, and then we knew 

that misfits only fit amiss  
where they do not fit in: 
and every kind of solace grows 
if light can just 

get in

i live within insomnia, 
its shadows ever o'er me, 
but see beyond a somewhere-else 
that i can keep before me. 

i choose the brightways of the mind 
to live on, and to travel, 
for stories live in twisted lights 
that we're meant to 

unravel