two hundred. twenty one.

There’s a blind woman  who lives on the house on the top of the hill that leads down to the lake.

She can remember how slowly the blindness came on.

Each day grew dimmer. Memories of her last days are caught in vignette, the edges darkening until there was no light or image left.

Each day grew louder and her feet had to learn to step without first seeing.

Now she lives alone by the lake.

The first time she made it down to the water by herself the wind blew through the aspen tree and the leaves all began clapping their hands for her.

She took a bow.

“Just because you cannot perceive the light does not mean there isn't light there.”

She reached her hand into the sunlit spot and felt the warmth.

She’s lived there for a year or two now and has been blind for five or six.

It set on when she was perfect and 28. She doesn’t know what she looks like anymore. She always used to ask her mother when she put her hair up: “Does it look alright?” Nervously, she would rake her fingers through. “Are there any bumps?”

Her mother would smooth the top. “None! You’ve adapted so well.”

She does her own hair now and asks her dog sometimes. “Fallon, does it look alright?”

He’d stick his cold nose in her hand to confirm.

“What’s the last thing you remember seeing?”

It wasn’t the last thing but it was the most important. She could see it still. The light grew softly from behind the tips of the pine trees. It was dawn and the horizon was all trees. They etched their way across the skyline and across her mind’s eye. She saw them often.

“Space,” she replied. “Just vastness – I can’t sense it anymore. Everything is so near, everything that I can sense is only within that reach. My eye could span farthest. I miss the sky.”

Sometimes she tilts her head up and opens her arms and it’s almost there; she can almost grasp the scope of the expanse.

But never quite.

“What does the sky look like today?” she’ll ask.

In the mornings she might forget, at first. She would open her eyes to darkness – always darkness. She’d blink several times before she remembered.

Several times when her mother came over to the house, random lights were left on because the blind woman would subconsciously turn them on when she walked into a room, a habit so familiar that she had no idea she had done it.

The hall light was nearly always on.

“It’s ok, dear. It lets people know that someone’s home.”