A Journey Beyond Sight: Rediscovering Mexico’s Soul with Reece O’Bryan

I was eighteen
when the tree found me.

Not moving.

Not angry.

Just standing there
like nature had all the time in the world.

I had a car.

I had a future.

I had eyes
and thought that meant
I understood the world.

Then came the impact.

Steel folded.

Glass exploded.

The night became a siren.

And somewhere between
the twisted metal
and the screaming voices,

I lost the light.

People told me
I was lucky to be alive.

Funny thing about luck.

Sometimes it looks a lot like
surviving the thing
that destroys the person you used to be.

Kentucky kept going without me.

The fields still grew.

The roads still stretched
through the heat.

The trees still stood
beside the highways,

silent witnesses
to every foolish young man
who believed tomorrow
was guaranteed.

I could not forgive that tree.

Maybe that sounds stupid.

But grief is not a courtroom.

It does not require evidence.

For years,
I carried that tree inside me.

Then one day,

I left.

I left the bluegrass.

I left the old roads.

I left the place
where every breeze
seemed to whisper,

You used to see this.

I went south.

All the way to Mexico.

I arrived with a suitcase,
a cane,
a broken history,

and no idea
what the hell I was doing.

Mexico did not feel like darkness.

It felt alive.

Music came through the streets.

Voices rose from open windows.

The air smelled of food, rain, dust,
and something I could not name.

Freedom, perhaps.

Or maybe just the terrifying relief
of becoming a stranger
where nobody knew
who you had been.

I learned the country
one sound at a time.

I learned the streets
by memory.

I learned faces
through voices.

I learned that a man
can lose his sight
and still find his way.

Sometimes I think
the tree took my eyes.

But maybe it also took
the illusion
that life owed me anything.

Now I walk beneath the sun
I cannot see.

And I laugh at the cruelty of it.

The world is full of light.

I just happen to know
how little of it
a person actually needs.

I left my eyes in Kentucky.

But I found myself in Mexico.

And if that tree
ever wonders what became of me,

tell it this.

I am still here.

Still breathing.

Still walking.

Still moving forward.

And the bastard
did not win.