The strobe lights of the sun scatter
my vision as we wind through a state
I've never visited before and will never
return to again. 

Do they always close your eyes
when you die? What if I wish to remain seeing, observing the blank panels of wood above my head for all eternity? 

We see so much in our short,
sweet lives. We see so little in our long, bitter ones, too. 

My sixth-grade science
class once dissected a cow's eye. 

I was too squeamish, packed myself
into the back of the lab and listened
to my peers oohing and aahing at the vivid blue color that lived in the iris. 

My eyes, too, are a bright
blue, the same white-smattered patterns
as my mother, but I'd trade
them in an instant to know for certain
I hold my father's love in the same way
my brown-eyed brothers do.