Filters

by Gwendolyn Erdosh

She is born with rosy glasses
Semi translucent and tinted to block out all the badness, so that only warmth and
love hits the corneas of soft, innocent eyes  

One day  
there’s a jolt  

it slams her face against the concrete, 
and the rosy glasses fall … shatter into a million pieces on the ground 

Their soft pink crystals scattered sharp on the floor she tries to stand up but the shards
pierce her feet, make them bleed  

She sees for the first time a world filtered
with gray,  

… there was a pair of lenses beneath  

The world looks dark now, the malevolence is squeezing in through the lenses, someday
those too will break and another pair will show itself 

And 

eventually...  hopefully, there will be no glasses left, only bare eyes  

reality shining in with its harsh brightness, without a filter 

the colors as real as real can be 

---

Gwendolyn Erdosh

7/23/21

My name is Gwendolyn Erdosh, my pronouns are she/they. I am a second year entomology major, and along with studying and rearing insects, I also make art and music. I am not a writer, but I was inspired by my Chicano poetry class to write this poem. I express myself through art, and poetry is a form of art.