Blue

So, I've only been posting poems on this blog. That's why I've decided to spice things up a little :) 

Enjoy! (Oh and the following short story is a work of pure fiction and any resemblance are mere coincidence.) 

I used to watch my mother paint in the studio at home; the brush softly skimming swiftly against the canvas board. I watched her call out the colors to me: fuchsia, xanthic, phthalo blue and persimmon orange. I remember the oily smell of them running deep like a river of colors through my nose. I recall how I would laugh whenever she dabbed a small stipple of prussian blue upon the canvas; how I would suddenly catch a whiff of something I would later recognize as pleasure. I thought back on how I would associate those colors with different things, and sometimes notes even: white – a C, red - jam, and black – a deep C minor chord. Back then, I was innocent and naïve; I was carefree … I was a child. Back then, I didn’t know that ‘normal’ people could not see and smell colors like I did. Back then I didn’t know that I was different; that I was like a stormy clouds creeping in on a sunny day or a puzzle that will never be complete or the mistake in a spelling test. 

Back then I didn’t know I had synesthesia – the case in which the senses are crossed.

It all started on the first day of school. I remember that we all had to say what the name was of the color shown on the board. The colors ran on and on, and all the children flailed their arms about amusingly, answering in unison.

Red! Orange! Yellow! Green!

But when a square block of prussian blue came up on the screen, I didn’t say ‘blue’. Instead, I said pleasure.

The teacher looked at me as if I were a deformed cell under a microscope. She ushered me out of the class, whilst the other children squealed and giggled unknowingly.

The teacher, Ms. Winned, said to me:

“Emily, dear, can you tell me again what you said?”

I was confused. I thought it was some game, so I stuck my finger in my mouth like any regular child and smiled as the word tumbled like vivid marbles from my lips.

“Pleasure.”

She asked again.

“Plea-sure.”

Ms. Winned called my mother afterwards, and she had an ‘adult-talk’ with her while I sat alone on the cheap, vermilion plastic chair as I watched her stand in an akimbo-like way, half looking at me. At that moment, I smelt the sour scent of spoilt milk sashaying from the teacher’s body, and an oily-paint smell ribboning its way from my mother.

After that day, I moved to another school.

My mother never told me why I had to move, but I knew it was something unpleasant, because I could smell that same oil-like scent, and I could faintly hear a slow, soft, shaky minor chord striking whenever we passed the school in the mornings before.

My new school was a public school, and not as small as the first. But before I went, my mother would always remind me to keep quiet and not say anything, as if her words were a dirty, burnt umber rag to gag me.

Of course, being a child, I didn’t.

Dr. Pade was my first doctor. Whenever I visited him, he would always play that game of colors. I really enjoyed it, but saw no actual point. He would ask:

“Emily, what do you smell?” as he pointed at deep, cinnamon block on a piece of card. I answered every time, and even once, he started playing some music that made me close my eyes and see sparks and shows of fireworks of vibrant colors that I don’t’ even know the names of.

I always relished those sessions - they were a breath of fresh air from school.

I was bullied, even from the beginning of Primary; children would spit out words of vile venom from their mouths. They would cast glares at me; stinging me every time, like adding salt to the cuts and scrapes of what I’ve become. I could hear whispers like dark, heavy clouds at the back of my head; I could smell their abomination, albeit they never realized I knew.

I was a lower–than-average student; I was no shiny gold medal, or a precious prize or properly regarded. However, the only subjects I was rather adroit in and enjoyed were Art and English.

In art classes, the teacher consistently complimented me for my ‘fine work’ and ‘reborn collections of Picasso.’ I never knew how I painted could stir such awe, for I only painted what I smelt and felt and heard. In art, I felt like I actually belonged; like I was the final piece of jigsaw that completed the puzzle. I felt like I was at home. In English, I wrote poems. I wrote poems related to my struggles as being the odd one out, the ‘outcast’ of my classmates. When my pen touched the paper, colors I smelt were being transformed as words. I felt like the heavy black bricks that had been building inside of me were finally breaking, falling down. I felt as if I were a river; pouring out all the impurities and residue like dirt out at last.

I felt like I was free.

Through the last year of school, I struggled like a fish on land. I learnt how to keep to myself, close my mouth. Yes, this ‘case’ that I have is a wall that blocks me from other people or a sly form of ostracism. But I have learnt how to deal with it; I have learnt how to filter it away its negativity, and use the advantages. I could control my synesthetic mind for purposes in life.

And now, as I sit in my own studio across the meadow that rolls like a sea of never-ending light cerulean blue grass, I think back to my childhood times.

And as I catch a slip of worn, brown paper from one of the boxes piled up like bricks upon the bookshelf, I see that it is a poem I have written a long, long, long time ago:

I used to think they’re all like me

Senses razor-sharp like a knife

Then I saw what they couldn’t see

That’s the moment that changed my life.

I used to scare off all my ‘friends’,

And at school it was full of strife

I’ve only been in friendships that always ends

That’s the moment that changed my life.

Up until now I have shunned this

But now I can play it like a fife

They finally can accept me – it’s bliss

That’s the moment that changed my life.

I look up after I read this, my eyes feeding on the canvas in front of me.

I hold my brush like how my mother used to, and paint a small stipple of prussian blue.

I smell something familiar:

Pleasure.