Myopia – 26th May 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen

Written for W3 Prompt #160:
Pick a single abstract noun that carries weight, mystery, or tension for you—something like liberty, danger, truth, love, exile, justice, forgiveness, joy, grief, silence…
Don’t use it until your poem’s final line.
Start each line with a description or action that leads us toward the noun, not from it. This is called left-branching syntax—it means delaying the main subject or verb.
You’re working with delay, accumulation, and unfolding. The noun you’ve chosen arrives only at the end. Until then, build around it, toward it, beneath it. Let readers feel its shape before they hear its name.
From Deepseek:
The word “opia” is a fascinating and relatively obscure abstract noun that captures a very specific, almost paradoxical feeling. It refers to the ambiguous intensity of eye contact—that unsettling, electric sensation when you lock eyes with someone, and the moment feels both intimate and invasive, vulnerable and powerful.

as wolf eyes in the gloom,

catching light,

a subtle, fleeting stare;


a mirror ball shaken by each boom,

a wincing fright,

enraptured to suddenly share;




is it a gander or a gawk?

tension-charged,

a piercing wonder;


translating a silent talk,

pupils enlarged,

enraptured to suddenly ponder;




uncertain at the exchange,

intimate invasion,

objectified by the gaze;


spine-tingling and strange,

a powerful persuasion,

enraptured to suddenly amaze;




a possibility of aggression,

observer and observed,

at the edge of scopophobia;


or a dance towards affection,

both slightly unnerved,

enraptured in this sudden opia.

13 thoughts on “Myopia – 26th May 2025”

  2. This is a tightly crafted, sensorially rich poem that uses language, rhythm, and formatting to evoke the intimate unease of eye contact – that strange moment of shared gaze which teeters between vulnerability and connection, threat and thrill. I recognised it immediately as I have sons with autism spectrum disorders. The wrong sort of gaze either upsets them or enraptures them – there’s no telling which way things will go. So the repetition of “enraptured to suddenly…” is like witnessing them catching or giving the gaze. Your use of the phrase echoes the involuntary, electric shock of being seen and seeing in return.

    The careful pairing of light and shadow, “wolf eyes in the gloom,”“mirror ball shaken by each boom,” conjures something between the nightclub and the dreamscape – both gothic and bodily, edged with danger and allure. And that brought to mind two other connections: the deeply melancholic gothic doom metal band Opia and the ethereal, witchiness of aeseaes’s album Opia. For me, there were so many connections in one brief poem.

    I thought the vocabulary was a standout feature – scopophobia, opia, gander, gawk – words that oscillate between the scientific and the poetic, the clinical and the instinctive. Combined with the poem’s formatting and the layered, deliberate spoken delivery, the result is richly textured, hypnotic and slightly disorienting. A standout response that shows it is possible for brief, sparse poems to be inventive, charged and complex.

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    1. Thank you for your indepth analysis. It inspires me to keep going, to know that the idea I am trying to get across has been seen. Sometimes, I can be obscure.

      I’m not familiar with band or album you mentioned and hadn’t actually come across the word Opia until searching for obscure abstract nouns to give me some inspiration.

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  3. Shaun, “enraptured in the sudden opia” really captures that eerie, electric tension of being seen too clearly. For me, your whole piece feels like a stare I can’t look away from.

    ~David

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    1. Thanks David. I imagined it as a split second eye contact with the most beautiful girl on the dance floor. Possibly followed by another split second eye contact from her boyfriend!

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