My twitching eye was always landing me in trouble—shuddering at a co-worker’s sexy wife, or at offensive jokes, or when someone wanted an obvious answer to a question—their faces contorted with anger at my twitching—their words singed with red-hot brand letters across my forehead spelling out either jerk, or jackass, or something worse.
I have learned to wear sunglasses with opaque, silver-tinged lenses that are impossible to penetrate. When I slip them on, I remember how as a child I shielded my eyes from the old man’s belt and still recall the stinging welts on my arms. Damn my eye! Thursday night, my co-workers are drinking, carousing, and my eye twitches uncontrollably.
Tonight, my eye is as worn out and as dull as an old darkened quarter under a moon that begs a sharp cloud not to slice it in half. Who will save me from my past? Why must I live with this malediction? Not even the old man replies on whose grave I scratch out my lines of Who am I? What am I? Only my cursed eye, twitching eye blinks in reply.
