Blind-Vein

by David Anson Lee

She pressed her fingers to my closed eyelid:
the pupil dark as a serpent’s cave,
veined with riverscars.

“See for me,” she whispered,
breath warm as incense drifting
through the clinic at dusk.
Outside, snow clung to black pine,
a hush of ancient world between heartbeats.

I dreamed of ghosts in mother’s silk,
sliding under thin skin like water
through a broken dam,
silverbright, rooting
in the soft white bone of my skull.

When I opened my eye: only vertigo.
The room tilted; light unsheathed itself
in trembling filaments.
I saw something holy
in the halfshadow,
a sparkle in dust motes,
a raw hymn in bloodlined capillaries
that carry more than oxygen.

Blessed are the blind veins:
they pulse with what cannot be named,
carry memory, carry longing, carry the smell
of home: jasmine and rain on reddust roads,
soy sauce simmering in a heavy pot,
the lullaby of my grandmother’s tongue
singing back to the bones.

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David Anson Lee is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose poetry explores ancestry, embodiment, and the sacred within everyday life. Drawing from his Native American and Chinese-American heritage, his work reflects on identity, memory, and healing across cultures. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, The Scarred Tree, and Ink Sweat & Tears.