Standing in the corner, by ; Maryam Sadiqa

Its a pity I cannot see the kreis, the gol chakar (of the gol bazaar),the roundabout of the Homburger Straße from my balcony anymore. It’s a circle of choice, a still axis spinning gently in the middle of the opposites. Like negatives and positives x and y axes on the graph. To the north— the road ahead, To the east— the pull of whats next ,To the south — a return to what was, To the west— a memory of before. You enter, not to stop, but to flow with the rhythm, to turn when its time, a place for the movement to curve into a thought and a decision to be made. Yet I cannot see the jugendliche on their electric scooters, crossing the zebra-crossing in a movement as swift as the wind caressing my hair while i watch them. Neither can i trace the letters on the STOP sign. Or distinguish between BMWs or Teslas. I cannot trace the path down the +y axis curving road, as to at-least mark when a person or a car is emerging from there.
And yet its all because of my eyesight. It has become weak, weaker still. Atleast thats what people told me. I liked to believe working my eyes in the light of a mombati, a candle, was not withering. That trying people’s spectacles was the same as trying looking from their perspectives. That despite this carelessness of mine, My best of eyesight would still be preserved for the Big dreams, Big world. What exactly was reckless of me was my ignorance when i heard my sister’s friend didn’t get accepted in the Air force academy because of her weak eyesight. But that crease would too, be ironed out later in life. Now i sit here in the dark, the streets standing beneath the streetlights, in the spotlight, a bright spot in the dark universe to navigate your way through life, some real lunatic drifting on the road southwards from the kreis, he doesn’t know perhaps but he could also lose sight. Now my eyes carefully work like my camera with which i used to take zoomed in photos of the street. I once zoomed in to capture what i saw, now i zoom in to see what i had captured. But the lens, they blur, focus, blur, blur and keeping blurring on. Just like things going bad one after the other. Now i have realized i have been stripped of the one vision, one path i had, the very same that lay in my eyes. My secret. My packet of Knor noodle’s spice, sometimes available to other people , sometimes not. So now i walk by memory, not by sight.