I wake up in the mornings early some days and I trace the outlines of the alphabet I find in the tree branches outside my window. The arching oaks whose acorns I’ll slip over in the fall. It’s easiest to find my name, the S stands out clearly, then the A, which is upside down, then the others, a mix of branches weaving over one another, crossing paths like weary travelers. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to cut them down and have a wooden name, but all the letters are a mix of two trees, so I guess it wouldn’t work too well. In the summer, when the light stays out later than I do, I crawl into bed and trace the letters until I fall asleep. In the winter, when all the leaves have fallen, leaving the branches desolate, I take mental snapshots and try to remember where all 26 letters are.

Of course, I can’t do that any more. My vision has gotten so bad that I ca hardly make out anything that’s more than a foot from my face. Most people don’t know how bad my vision really is. I wear contacts everyday, so it’s easy to hide the fact. They don’t know that I can’t see the scoreboard at a basketball game without my glasses. To be able to read what I’m writing now without corrective lenses, I would have get about four inches away from the screen. It makes swim team hard. Even though I’m not supposed to wear contacts in the water I do anyway. Everyday. Otherwise, instead of landing perfect flipturns, I’d crash into the wall of the pool, I wouldn’t be able to compete in backstroke cause I wouldn’t be able to see the flags. Everytime I dive off the blocks, I pray to myself that the goggles stay on: I can’t open my eyes underwater without the contacts falling out.

When I wake up now, all I see is a blurry mess of brown outside my window. No more letters, just a smear of colors. Once, I reached for my glasses on the nightstand and traced the alphabet to see if I could still find them all. But it wasn’t the same, I can’t wake up and relax, letting my eyes surf over the tree-alphabet in my window.