Published in Ricepaper 17.3/17.4
Blind Love
by Kagan Goh
Riding the number 9 Alma bus I watch a Native man and an Oriental woman hold hands as they help each other board the bus. I notice they both grip white canes. The couple is blind.
I imagine this couple naked in bed touching each other’s faces in the dark. They see with the mind’s eye the inner beauty within their partner’s soul in a world blinded by superficial appearances. Kissing each other on the lips for what does it matter whose lips belong to whom? Feeling in the dark they are blind witnesses to each other’s naked bodies. They are not frightened of the unknown. Instead their senses are heightened, their fragile eggshell mind’s enlightened seeing what no one else can see: each other’s true inner beauty. Reading the Braille of goose bumps on their skin, they make love by crossing all boundaries, worshipping each other as God dissolving into One.
I am amazed to see the husband carrying their baby in a knapsack on his back. The sight of this blind couple with their baby moves me. If they can find true love and have a family, maybe there’s hope for me yet?
I want to ask them: “What is it like being blind and having a child?”
I imagine the tremendous responsibility of being blind and taking care of a baby; a child who, unlike his parents, can see. But I keep silent, not wanting to invade their privacy.
They pull the cord and the three of them get off the bus. Opening an umbrella to shield each other from the rain, the wife takes her husband’s arm and they walk tapping their canes as they make their way home.
I smile to myself, feeling happy to have witnessed blind love for the first time in my life.