A World Without Lines

He never knew what colors looked like. They told him the sky was blue and the grass was green but those were just words to him. He imagined the world through sound and touch and in that world people were just voices. They were never black or white, tall or short, rich or poor. They were just people. 

He had never looked at someone and judged them before they spoke. He had never seen a face and assumed what kind of person they were. He only knew kindness by the way someone spoke and cruelty by the way someone stayed silent or when someone yelled. 

To him laughter had no shape and love had no face. He recognized people by the sincerity in their speech and the hesitation in their pauses. He understood honesty through steady voices and deceit through forced smiles. His world was not divided by appearances or controlled by assumptions. His world was just sound and movement and emotion.

Sometimes people felt sorry for him because he could not see but he wondered if they were the ones missing out. They saw too much and heard too little. They judged before they understood and divided before they connected. They fought over shades of skin and shapes of bodies while he only cared about the way someone made him feel.  

He would never see a sunrise or a rainbow or a field of flowers but he would also never see hatred in someone’s eyes or disgust in their expression. He would never see the lines that people drew between themselves and others. His world was not broken by difference or ruined by prejudice. His world was free.  

Maybe blindness was not the absence of sight but the absence of bias. Maybe the ones who could see were the ones who failed to look deeper.