pupillae

It was only two months ago when you had the procedure.  You can no longer remember why.  You know only that you must have liked the idea of your eyes tasting shapes.  You had money.  Maybe that was all the reason there ever was.

For a month, your life was normal.  Your brain was still learning to process the new input.  Sometimes you would vaguely taste oranges when sitting at your computer.  Or catch yourself thinking that the letter O seemed sour.  Or avoid a restaurant that served food on oval plates, because some ovals taste like bad coffee.

You can't pinpoint the day you first spent over an hour staring at squares.  You had not meant to.  It was just, they tasted kind of like cake, but like a better cake than any you'd ever had.  It was hard to pull away.

Nor can you pinpoint the day you first threw up at the sight of a 32º angle.  It tasted like urine and skunk.  You are today afraid you will encounter another one.

Last week you resorted to blindfolding yourself for most of the day.  Occasionally you brave a look at the world.  Mostly at squares.  But you try to refrain.  It is too much.

Yesterday, you are heard about a support group (or defendants in a lawsuit, depending on who you ask) for people who had the procedure.  You decided to go.  You would like to bankrupt those who did this to you.  You would like to be healed.  

(Although you wonder if by the time the computerized chips in your eyes could be removed, you would not allow it because you are afraid of losing the taste of squares.  You must keep the blindfold on.  You must not look.)

Today you are here.  Today you are meeting others like you.  Look around, those of you who are not blindfolded, those of you who aren't the man who blinded himself permanently because he could not bear the taste of right angles.  Have sympathy for each other if you are not the type to spare sympathy for yourself.

Today our fight begins.