It’s been a few years after losing my eyesight and I’m starting to forget all the colors that I once saw every day. Colors used to be my life at one point. I was an artist and photographer before and a friend of every color palette known to mankind. I’d mix and shade them with one another to make beautiful portraits and photographs. I’d play with different effects on images and make the colors really pop. Men and women would line up for my commissions of their families or just photoshoots of themselves or their pets. They loved my work and I loved working with different subjects and using different methods. Every canvas I had was enveloped in color and every image I shot was sharp and beautiful.

You don’t realize how much you miss colors until they’re gone and all you see is a black void everywhere you go. Now I don’t paint. I don’t photograph. And no one asks for commissions. Now all I have is my fading memory of the colors I used to cherish.

My boyfriend has tried to help me remember, but when he lists things out and tells me the color they are, I say “oh, right, now I get it” but I’m really lost. So incredibly lost. I just don’t want him to know how futile it is to try and remind me.

I remember red is a firetruck, and I picture the firetruck, but I picture it in black and white and grey.

I remember blue is the sky, but I picture a mass of darkness above me.

I remember green is grass, but I picture black and grey lines on the ground, dewey and wet.

I remember yellow is the sunflowers he gave me on our first date, but I picture light grey petals.

I’ll never see any colors again. I’ll never be able to remember my memories the same. They’ve all been muted in color. They’re different now. It’s all different.

But I try to stay positive because I’m really lucky in the end. Yes, I’ve lost my eyesight, but I haven’t lost my other senses. I still taste the oatmeal and water I’m fed each day. I still feel the chill of the cement ground or the softness of the mattress in my room. I still smell the metal chains that leave it’s scent on my skin. I still hear the light stomping from above signaling me that my boyfriend is home from work.

Without these other senses, I’d surely go insane.

Instead, however, I get to feel my heart thud against my ribcage in excitement as the loud thud of my boyfriend’s work boots descend down the staircase and I get to hear his comforting voice and feel his hand caress mine as he lovingly strokes it with his thumb.

“I’m back, baby.”

I smile and greet him back, shifting from my position on the mattress on the ground, my metal restraints clinking with every movement. I turn towards his voice and sigh with relief knowing I’m not alone anymore.

He treats me good down here and he knows it. Besides, I couldn’t live on my own after losing my sight anyway. I was lucky he offered to help me out, especially after how upset he was at my last commission. I almost lost him over it.

It was a photoshoot I had done with an aspiring you g male model. He wanted updated images for his portfolio and he paid very well. The photographs were great, I remember that. Nothing crude or extreme, though he did want a few shirtless images to show possible employers. You know how it goes.

These were what caused my boyfriend to become so enraged. I really should have known better, but I thought it was an innocent photoshoot of someone. I’d edit the images, send them on my way and delete them off my camera. Nothing more.

I was wrong.

He saw these images and accused me of cheating and of looking at other men behind his back. I didn’t think it was a big deal back then, so I argued.

Wrong move.

My boyfriend has a temper. And, really it was my fault in the end, so I hold no grudge that our argument ended when he took some hydroquinone from my film developer station, held me down, and drowned my eyes in the burning liquid. I screamed and screamed and the last thing I saw was the container pouring over my eyes before everything sunk into darkness.

It hurt, yes, but I had hurt him first. Now I know to never look at another man again.

Not that I could.