Anticipating returning my new glasses to the optician for the second time

I reflect on their defects. They give me
headaches and make the words swarm
dangerously. If I shut my right eye, each
letter has a dark ghost hovering above it, a
shadowy alter-ego, a gloomy
guardian angel – or anti guardian – and
the letters are a broken grey as though the
ink is draining from them, as though they
just can’t see the point. Sometimes there
are not just bees but the winking eyes of
bladder wrack heaving on a
turbulent sea.

Will the optician understand about the
swarms, the seaweed and the ghosts or
will she just hand me the
cardboard story, the one about the
boy to whom something
bad is about to happen but
you never find out what because you
are never allowed to read beyond the
second sentence of small print, not even
the second time that you are
back at the
optician’s with your glasses.