The sky hanging above is a sort of toneless gray, like at the bottom of a drain when all that’s been poured down it is gravel. It isn’t the clean kind of gray, that of stone or the back of the eyelid during the night. It is incessantly plain, the tint of a dirty mirror. It is not the color a sky should be.

This is what people know, but very few actually remember what the sky is meant to look like...

All was very still.

All but the young woman in the corner, who stood like a ghost and moved like a shadow. She was the daughter of the house. And soon she would be gone.

The daughter ran her fingers along a windowsill just to watch dust swirl into the air, because she could hardly stand the stillness. The loneliest she’d ever felt was on afternoons like this one where all activity seemed to dwin...

Looking back on it now, I see the exact moment I fell apart.

It wasn’t when the very first tears came because she told me I would never be more to her than what I already was. It wasn’t when I begged her to try to feel what I did—I didn’t get on my hands and knees, but I may as well have. It wasn’t when she left the door open behind her and I felt the very foundations of my life giving way beneat...

Curtains up. Lights on. You’re the playwrite, dear, not me. Is this how it goes?

This room is bright and summery. Honey light leaks in through the windows. I sit at the dining table, the polished mahogany surface we bought three years ago in the flea market behind the run-down Chinese restaurant where we met. Do you remember that day?

Oh, my dear. How things have changed between us.

I do not sp...

In this case, the Alternative is a place. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Back up.

In this case, the Alternative is a choice.

Or perhaps, it is the lack of one. The Alternative is what you get when you do not make a choice, or when you do not like the choice you are given to make.

In a different case, far away from here, the Alternative is a person. And that person is a moment, and that ...