They Used to be Green

Last night, they were green. It took several minutes before I noticed, as generally I keep the bathroom light off first thing in the morning. It was a habit I had adopted since moving in with my boyfriend a couple of years ago. He did it, and that meant so too did I. But before I bore you with details, let me tell you about my eyes. I first noticed it while running a comb through my hair. The eyes in the mirror that were supposed to be mine were blue. Mine were always green.

Brush hanging from my hair, I just stood there and stared. If my eyes had changed, had anything else? I leaned closer to the mirror, and the bottom of my shirt must have dragged across a wet spot on the sink from when I had washed my face and after I shifted myself to stand at the corner of the sink, the shirt clung to my skin making me shiver. A disgusting feeling, and I was tempted to forget the color of my eyes and change first. Plus, I looked a mess and no doubt my boyfriend, who was reading in bed, would notice and give me one of those looks like he always did.

But… my eyes. Gross shirt or not, my eyes could not wait.

Nose to the mirror, I examined my face. As far as I could tell, everything else about my appearance remained the same. Same little freckle under my eye that only I noticed and, to be honest, I rather hated. Same little hairs over my lip that were well overdue for a waxing. That was one thing my boyfriend didn’t just give one of his looks for, he always made sure I knew that he had noticed. Aren’t you a bit overdue? he’d ask while tilting his head as if there were a fat tick attached to my upper lip rather than a bit of hair. So, it wasn’t like I had suddenly woken up with someone else’s face. It was just the color of my eyes that had changed.

It could have been sudden bright lighting, and my eyes needed a bit more time to adjust. My boyfriend insisted on getting cool-toned lights for the entire house. While I appreciated it for the bathroom, it still sometimes stung my eyes and made little spots appear in my vision. That could be what happened. I came in from a dark room, and the sudden light did something odd to the way I perceived color. I ought to suggest a dimmer for the bathroom over breakfast.

Or, you know, I could be going color blind.

Unwilling to accept the latter explanation, I gave my eyes time to adapt to the lighting, and after brushing my teeth I returned the brush to the little cup by the sink, which was red. Like it always had been. But my eyes. Those still hadn’t gone back to green.

Unbelievable! Cancer, what if I had cancer? Could cancer change the color of someone’s eyes overnight? To be honest, I wasn’t sure if they had changed overnight or if the process had been slow, so I pulled out my phone. Surely, I’d have some pictures saved that would show a slow progression if there was one at all. With how bright the bathroom lights were, the screen was washed out, so I had to squint and bring it close to my face. The first picture I pulled up was one of my boyfriend and me on summer vacation. Sunglasses covered my eyes. Useless. Another, and this one I had blinked. The next I had my head turned towards something off screen. I scrolled and scrolled, and not a single picture with my eyes. Always blinking, always looking away. Always something. But his—they were always right there. The rest of the photos were of our pets and random images of notes I had taken for my sociology final. In that moment, I wished I had gotten a degree in biology after all, just to make sense of my damned eyes. That was the original plan, you know? I wanted to study biology because I had always been an animal lover.

“What kind of job can you get with that?” my boyfriend had asked me during senior year of high school. Yeah, we were high school sweethearts. Anyway, it was a tradition to put each student’s future plans up on this big wall by the entrance. Things like, what college we planned on attending and the degree we had declared. Mine said biology. Of course, that didn’t last long after the conversation with my boyfriend, and so that’s how I ended up pursuing sociology.

“Kayla the sociologist,” my boyfriend had said after I gave him my new plans. It had made him so proud. “I can already imagine you with sexy glasses and sitting behind a desk. Kayla the sociologist. Now that sounds like my girlfriend.”

More photos, ones from my high school graduation. Yeah, I scrolled back that far. Even there, my eyes were closed. Nothing. How could there not be a single photo that showed my eyes? The phone slipped from my hands and smashed against the edge of the sink. The sound it made was horrible, like something ripped from my ear, and even after the noise should have been gone, it still somehow remained buried in the void it had made. Across the screen of my phone was a massive crack that ran down its length. I had never broken a phone before. Usually, I was so careful about what I did with my hands. No doubt, this would earn a comment from my boyfriend.

The screen lit up. At least it still worked, which was one less thing for me to worry about. A text from my boyfriend. Is everything okay? Heard something loud.

I texted him back because in this house we did not shout. Doing fine, I’ll be right out.

I gave one last glance at the mirror to see if my eyes had returned to their original shade—they hadn’t—and closed the bathroom door behind me. My boyfriend sat in bed reading one of those bulky fiction books about medieval politics and war. Stuff he told me to read because I’d enjoy it. Which wasn’t the case. I found the books so slow and dense, and I hated politics. I wanted sword fights and sex. Still, I read them because I figured it would improve me in some way, and some day, I might actually enjoy them. When he asked what I thought of each book in the series, my answer was always the same. I thought it was great, can’t wait for the next.

He lowered his book when I shuffled over.

“Heard a lot of banging in there, everything okay?” he asked.

“Can I ask you something?” My mouth was so dry. The words were like grit against my tongue. I should explain my phone but… I needed to know if he saw it too—the blue of my eyes.

One brow rose and, very slowly, as if he were considering saying no, though I know he would never do such a thing, he stuffed his bookmark into the crevice of his too-thick book and said, “Ask away.”

“Could you look at my eyes?”

His glasses slid down his nose as he brought his face close to mine. “Your eyes are very pretty. I’ve always adored your eyes. Bright, clear, but also sultry.” He added the last bit with a smile.

“But does anything look wrong to you?”

“No, your eyes look normal to me. Not bloodshot, nothing stuck. Just a set of beautiful blue eyes.”

Blue. So, he saw it too. It wasn’t just in my head or an altered perception of color. It was right there, in my eyes. They truly were blue.

“They’re blue?” I repeated, doing my best not to let the tremor give my nerves away.

“Of course they are.”

“But…” my voice trailed. He was already giving me one of those looks that meant you’re being strange, or more precisely, you’re taking up too much space. I hated that look. I wanted to unknit his furrowed brows and smooth them back into place. “Have they ever looked green to you?”

“Green?” he repeated, then laughed. “Can’t say that they have. Why do you ask? Would you prefer if they were green?”

Did I? I hadn’t considered it before. Green was my eye color, or at least… I thought it was.

“Would you like it better if they were green?” I wasn’t sure why I asked that. Maybe because I hoped that if they were at some point green when we first met, he would miss it—the color I used to be.

“No,” he said. “I like them blue. That’s the color that they are, and how they are supposed to be.”

He didn’t say that’s the way they always were. Was that on purpose, or perhaps I was overthinking? I suppose it was possible that I had imagined that they were green, or the leftovers of last night’s dream had bled into my head. But the memory of my green eyes seemed so vivid, and I was sure that they had to have been there at least at some point. It could be they were green before I met my boyfriend, and that’s why he didn’t miss them. That didn’t seem right. This felt new and strange, and I was so sure I would have noticed the change long before today, and also, I wasn’t sad about the change; if my boyfriend wasn’t, then I had no reason to be either. But a part of me wanted to be.

Worried that my boyfriend would think I was acting strangely, I forced myself to smile and kissed his cheek before I left him to his book.

The rest of the day went on as normal. Neither my boyfriend nor I mentioned our conversation earlier that day. I did, however, check the pictures we had set up around the apartment to see if any of them showed my eyes. They didn’t, of course. Now, this might be nothing, but I also struggled to find a single object within our home that was green. We didn’t keep any plants, not yet at least, so that could have been why, but the only green thing I could find was one of my old biology books from high school. When we first moved in, my boyfriend teased me for keeping it, saying I’d never find a use for it. Yet, I could never part with it. Not to mention, it was such a vibrant shade of green, like a little piece of the outside had made a nest in the bookcase. Today, it would finally be of some use. I’d never tell my boyfriend that, but I’d like to tell you.

Flipping through the pages, I stopped when I came across a stunning picture of a husky dog with beautiful blue eyes—the same shade as mine. In the caption, it was explained that the blue color is nothing more than an illusion. You see, there is little to no pigment in blue eyes, and the color comes from light bouncing off the iris.

Funny. My eyes didn’t change color. The color was just gone.