Riding in my father’s car through city lights,
I see one building that’s completely dark:
no white windows, no security floods.
Compelling as a ghost, as if three stories
of hand-made brick and narrow windows
travelled back to their mid-19th century birth
when textile mills ruled, before electricity.
My father tells me it’s a boarding school
for blind children who don’t need lights.
He’s cheerful; they are saving money.
I am upset. I don’t think the blind should be
deprived of light because they can’t see.
My father laughs.

We are going home from the emergency room
where a young doctor from India put five stitches
in the back of my head which I had bashed
against a coffee table corner, and I am afraid
of blind children living in darkness.