No, I Wasn't Always Colorblind

I saw an angel at the cemetery one night.
It was kneeling at a gravestone, as if in prayer,
staring up at a stone image of itself and it looked
so lonely,
I could feel it—
I think it was trying to talk to the statue—
its lips were moving,
but I couldn’t hear a word.
‘Hey man,” I told it,
(can you call an angel ‘man’?)
‘That’s not your friend. It’s not real, it can’t talk back.’
It looked at me, head-on—at least I think,
I couldn’t tell—
it was like looking into the sun.
‘Just like Our Father,’ it said,
voice buzzing like bees or flies or locusts.
And then my head felt hot, like all of summer had burst behind my skull,
and there was this sickening
pop
somewhere behind my eyes.
And that’s how I lost my ability to see the color blue.