Pascale Potvin

(After “February Stars” by the Foo Fighters.)

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The day that there was just one dead pixel in my vision, I thought, okay—this is the day I might go blind.

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Even the eye doctor didn’t have a confident explanation for why this had happened. Except, I mean, at least you’re going blind wasn’t one, I suppose.

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“You’re seeing stars?” he’d asked, at first, before he’d even looked up to completely see me.

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“No. It’s like the opposite of a star. The in-between,” I’d said, every bit convinced that I was making sense in the moment. "Just a black dot. The bottom corner of whatever I'm trying to look at. At any time.”

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I’m not even jilling off, I’d so desperately, desperately wanted to joke.

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And they kept coming, too, with no discernible pattern; it was as if every day I was seeing—or not seeing—a new, dark little speck in my windshield of vision. It didn’t matter whether I was just playing music at home, or at the grocery store trying to pick-up whole-wheat bread instead of white, since who knew what might’ve been causing this. They kept coming. 

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“Did anything out of the ordinary happen around the time that this started?” he’d asked, at our second appointment and looking more fully into my eyes—well, not really. 

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I’d really begun to better understand his earlier questions. These spots were really were like black little stars, the way they appeared in no particular order. 

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But they were still opposite stars. Does that have any philosophical inquiry?, I had to wonder.

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“I don’t think so,” I told him, because of course I couldn’t tell him the truth about how I lived. Then, after both of our hesitations: “I seem to get a new spot every time one of my fish dies.”

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His eyes went wide, then, with his brows. Or, at least one of them—the one I could see.

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“I think their tank might be too small,” I told yet another sort-of lie. “And there’s not too much light in my basement. So the fish keep passing away.”

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Hold on, is what I guess I’m right now telling you.

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Hold on.

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Pascale is Editor-in-Chief of Wrongdoing Magazine and an Editor at a few other publications, including CHEAP POP and Walled Women Magazine. She’s also Staff Contributor for The Aurora Journal and has placed further work in Eclectica Magazine, Maudlin House, BlazeVOX, Witch Craft Magazine, and many others. She has a BAH from Queen’s University, and she is working on a budding book series. You can read more about her at pascalepotvin.com or @pascalepalaces on Twitter.