Phosphenes Poem by Dr Shamim Ali

Close your eyes and press your palms against them,
watch the universe ignite within
a private cosmos blooming in the dark,
each burst of light a tiny, fleeting spark.
They dance like fireflies trapped beneath your lids,
these phantom stars that no one else can see,
spiraling galaxies of gold and green,
the most impossible and lovely thing.
Not real, and yet they shimmer there so bright,
these children born of pressure and of night,
these visions that your brain creates from nothing,
constellations made from gentle touching.
Purple rings expand like ripples on a pond,
white lightning flashes, then it's gone beyond,
geometric patterns spin and multiply,
a kaleidoscope behind your private eye.
They prove that light lives somewhere in our bones,
that even darkness isn't quite alone,
that we carry inside us our own sky,
our own small suns that live and bloom and die.
Phosphenes proof that beauty needs no source,
that wonder follows its own hidden course,
that sometimes what we see that isn't there
is more miraculous than what we share.
So close your eyes and make the heavens start,
those borrowed stars, that self-made, beating art
reminders that the mind's a magic place
where light can live in pressured, empty space.