Nocturnal Journal #13

Fiction & Poetry Newsletter by Ecem Yucel

Dec 11, 2021

Almost

The regrets have sharp teeth,
impaling the flesh to the bone,
there are eyes you wish to forget
which has cost you an arm and a leg.

Then, there are melodies which
remind you of the nobility of the heart,
making you think nothing in the world
could ever seduce you.

As the minors flow away
from the strings of a violin
and one by one the melancholic thoughts
fill and empty your head,

your soul yearns for
those innocent, simpler times,
you wonder just where that little child
inside you is hidden now.

And for a moment, as the bow
vibrates the strings of your heart
instead of the violin’s,
you feel the child nearby:

she’s out of the range of all the senses;
but then, groping in the dark, you believe
you’re about to catch her
and wear her around you like a skin:

as she is your pure version,
what you had been once,
she has what you’ve lost,
she is who you’ve missed.

Your fingers are almost there, almost,
how close you are to look in the eye
of life with pride and joy,
and never again feel low and embarrassed.

Then the violin stops cruelly
and the melodies are heard no more,
and once again you remember the lies,
which have faded many fresh buds,

your soul had gotten to know.
Almost.
Hands aimlessly dangle by your sides,
the child is now forever lost.

-Fiction-

The Color Purple

It all started with a snowflake.

It was snowing when I walked home after a hard day at work. My mind was preoccupied with thoughts chasing each other like a thousand foxes in the woods. One of the architectural projects I was leading at the office was completely rejected by the client, and I’d been scolded by my boss twice that day. I had the risk of losing the project and the bonus that would come with it, which I was planning to use to pay off my student loans. Without that big project, my job wouldn’t be safe either.

I almost jumped out of my skin when a screech of brakes and a horrible noise of a horn exploded next to my ear. I looked around with eyes wide open, panting like actors in the movies who’d just been brought to life after moments of death. I saw two cars, nearly crashed right next to the pavement I was walking on, and now the drivers were getting out of the cars, yelling at each other. The scare they gave me shook me to the core. My heart was drumming in my ears. As soon as I gathered myself from the haze, I tried to walk away from the cars and the yelling. That was when a freezing wind hit my face and shoved a snowflake into my left eye before I could blink.

My eye hurt for a split second with the alien object in it; then I felt it freeze gradually. It was as if the cold spread through my nerves toward the back of my eye, and then, to my brain. The pain it caused made me feel dizzy. I went down on my knees on the cold, snowy, and wet ground and tried not to faint. I could hear a couple of pedestrians gathering around me and asking me if I was okay —assuming the almost crash of the cars hurt me somehow. The freezing, blinding pain in my eye and my brain was so severe that I couldn’t answer them; I felt like if I tried to utter a word even, I would vomit right there and then. I heard someone talking about calling an ambulance. My body collapsed, and I lay down on the ground. I could feel the cold snow under my cheek, but it wouldn’t compare to the freeze I was experiencing in my head. I barely noticed the siren making a crescendo before I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes again, I was on a stretcher, and two paramedics swiftly moved above me. “Are you OK, ma’am?” asked one of them seeing I was awake. “How are you feeling? Where does it hurt?”

My brain started an automatic checkup of my body, looking for a trace of pain while trying to remember what had happened. It found the anomaly in my left eye: a trace of horrible pain which had finally decreased to a throbbing.

“Are you OK, ma’am?” the medic asked again, looking into my eyes with his small flashlight.

Pitch black.

“No,” I said in a hoarse voice. “I think I am blind.”

——

The initial eye exam and the MRI conducted by an ER doctor resulted in no diagnosis. The doctor tried to assure me there was nothing wrong with my eyes nor did I have a neurological problem that would show up on the MRI scan. He suggested I could see a specialist if I want to, but he was behind his diagnosis, that my eyes and my brain appeared healthy and normal.

The next day, my usual eye doctor managed to squeeze me in for a checkup, but she couldn’t find anything wrong with my eyes either.

Then came more consultations with eye surgeons, neurologists, diagnosticians, and more MRIs. However, in the end, everyone agreed on one thing: there was nothing wrong with me.

“But I can’t see anything with my left eye. It’s all pitch black,” I insisted like a mad person, right after the last specialist I went confirmed that I had very healthy eyes and a healthy brain. My voice was full of panic that was churning inside me.

“Were you going through a stressful time when this incident happened?” she asked.

“Things are a bit busy at the office,” I admitted, after exhaling to calm myself down.

“It may be a symptom of a psychological problem then,” she replied. “I suggest you consult with a psychiatrist next.”

——

After a four-month-long therapy, my psychiatrist had to admit that there seem to be no issues with my mental health. I was one of the blessed people who had a happy childhood; though often stressful, a job I loved; a healthy family, good friends, and a handsome, loving boyfriend. The psychiatrist still believed that the excessive stress I had at work had played a role in triggering this psychosomatic blindness, but therapy seemed to lead us nowhere. It was like he wanted me to be miserable, so he could explain my psychosomatic blindness.

I gave up. No matter what I did or said, how I begged, cried or complained, nothing would change. I was blind in one eye and had to accept myself like this if I wanted to go on with my life. I didn’t have another choice, and frankly, I was afraid of losing my other eye’s sight if I’d keep stressing about it.

Yet, I still had hope for my sight to return one day. It can’t go on like this forever, I kept telling myself. It can’t. It has to get better one day.

That’s how I could go on.

——

Five months after the incident, I discovered that my left eye could see a little again. It could see the objects and people as some sort of vague silhouettes. Inside me, hope started to stir in its sleep. Still, I didn’t tell anybody about it. It was silly maybe, but I was afraid to jinx it, so I remained silent. It seemed like my silence was working: eventually, things got clearer and clearer and seemed normal, with only one exception: they all were in black and white.

A couple of weeks later, things changed once again. The objects remained in black and white, but I started to see the living things in five bright colors: red, purple, orange, yellow and green. This vision reminded me of those thermal goggles soldiers and spies used in movies. My plants, the trees and the flowers I came across seemed bright green all the time. Street cats, birds, my neighbour’s dog were all bright orange as well as most of the people I passed by in the streets. I assumed the green symbolized the plants’ life energy, whereas the orange symbolized the humans’ and animals’. People also turned red when they were feeling very hot, angry, or when they became dangerous to the others around them — witnessing a street fight with bright red perpetrators made me draw this conclusion. All living things also turned different shades of yellow when they were stressed (greenish-yellow), afraid (light yellow), or sick (dark yellow). The brighter the yellow, the sicker, the more afraid or stressed was the person, the animal or the plant. This was also true with other colors; the brighter the color, the stronger the state or emotion they were in.

The only color I couldn’t pin down for a while was the color purple. Purple was my least favourite color, so I didn’t like seeing people around me, including my boyfriend Ethan, often turning to shades of purple. After observing for some time, at first, I thought maybe it was the color of love and affection. Ethan turned purple whenever he made love to me; he was bright purple when he said he loved me, or a dimmer purple when he talked about trivial things, like what he did at his work that day. It was a silly thought that an adolescent girl would think, but I thought maybe talking to me filled his heart with love, no matter how small the talk and that was why he turned purple. Hearing other people at the office or in the streets expressing their love or gratitude to the others while turning purple assured me that it was the color of love. So, though I didn’t like the color, I got happy whenever Ethan was purple in my left eye.

I adapted to the bright colors in my eye after a while. I started to wear an eye patch when I went to work so I could concentrate on my job, and not on the colors. I told people that doctors told me to rest my eye when looking at the computer screen, so they didn’t ask again. Some made a few, not even remotely funny, pirate jokes. I fake laughed with them, vocalized a couple of “arrr, matey”s and that was the end of it. Everybody got used to the eyepatch girl in a few days.

I never told anybody—not even my boyfriend, who often changed from orange to yellow, red or purple—about these bright colors I kept seeing. The colors didn’t affect my life much, so there was no need to tell. If I were to talk about it, people would surely think that I was crazy and in need of therapy, and I didn’t want to deal with them.

It was something crazy though.

——

The day I had an important meeting with my boss, I overslept and got late to the office. When I stormed into my boss’ office and started to lie about an accident that made me late, I glimpsed myself in the mirror hanging on the wall — which made me come to a halt.

Two things I noticed in my reflection. First, I forgot to wear my eye patch when I was in a hurry to leave my house. And second, I was bright purple.

I got confused. Why was I purple? I didn’t feel love or affection toward my boss, it was a very distant, professional relationship. Nor was I thinking anything related to love at that moment. On the contrary, I was focusing on a good, believable lie.

Took me a few minutes to get there. How stupid I had been all this time. Lie. Of course.

Purple was the color of lie, not love.

——

When I arrived home that night, I kept watching Ethan secretly. Initially, he seemed a shade of color between light orange and yellow, which meant he was tired but mostly good. He didn’t change colors when we talked about our day, or when he told me a new joke he heard from one of the guys at his office. Every minute he kept his color, I was relieved a bit more. I even laughed at the joke lightheartedly.

It was during dinner things started to mess up.

While eating, Ethan told me he had to go to a convention for his job, which was going to be held out of town that weekend. He said it would be so boring and he hated these things. He would miss me like hell, he added.

He also turned purple.

Only the sound of our forks and knives clanging to our plates was heard for a while.

“Baby,” I started, “tell me something.”

“What is it, babe?” he asked, cutting his beef.

“Have you ever lied to me?”

He stopped cutting and looked at me.

“Of course not. I’ve never lied to you. Why would you ask?”

In my right eye, he wore a surprised and a bit offended expression. But in my left eye, he was bright purple.

For a minute, I tried to gulp down my nausea and control my limbs so they wouldn’t shake from the anger and disbelief growing in me. I was so afraid of what would come next. Don’t do it, a tiny voice in my head said. Don’t dare to ask what you’ve been thinking. You love him. Everything’s going fine. Don’t blow it. It’s easier if you don’t ask.

“You wouldn’t cheat on me, would you Ethan?” And so, my tongue betrayed to the tiny voice in my head.

His face changed. He frowned, his black eyes became cloudy, and he seemed troubled.

“What the hell are you asking me? Is something going on?” he asked, agitated. He seemed angry, as he resented hearing such a question from me like I was being unreasonable. I couldn’t stop thinking that he should have turned to red, at least a bit if his anger were to be genuine. Yet, he stayed purple.

“Nothing’s going on. I’m just asking,” I said coldly.

“You’re being silly,” he said.

“Silly or not, I wanna hear it. How hard can it be? Just tell me the truth, that you’re not cheating on me, and I’ll shut up.”

He sighed and leaned toward me, then took my hand and brought it to his lips. “Babe, of course, I’m not cheating on you. You’re the only one for me. Don’t you know that?”

Brightest purple I’d ever seen. I felt like I would die.

“One last question,” I said, trying to stay expressionless. He sighed again, impatiently, letting go of my hand. Every inch of his face was saying that he was annoyed by my questions.

“What is it now?” he asked nervously.

Don’t do it. Don’t fucking ask it.

“Do you love me?”

Ethan looked at me and laughed like he was relieved of all the tension from before.

“You are really silly today! Of course, I love you!” he said with a lightened-up face. Then, he brought his face closer to mine.

“I love you so much,” he whispered before he kissed me.

I closed my eyes to not see the brightest purple when our lips touched.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this issue, a share, like, and a comment goes a long way. :)

If you’d like to read more poetry from me, please check out my new poetry book ‘The Anguish of an Oyster’ here.

You can also check my website for more information.