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. It happened so long ago; the loss. When first the trees had gone gray, then the oceans below and the mountains above, then the very people who inhabited the world. Then, of course, the sky.

But it has been so long now. And so very few who were here before are still here after.

There is one, however, who carries with her not her own memories of the time before the loss, for she is far too young to have been alive back then, but the memories of her mother, and her mother before that, and her mother before that. Her ancestors who lived during the loss and who have, through careful whispers and meticulous descriptions, passed everything they knew down to her.

It lives within her, all the knowledge of the past. It stews and it grows and it never hungers less.

It is a difficult thing, to describe colors to one who has never seen them. But it has been done before, only through the most painstaking detail, for nothing so delicate can afford to be nebulous. Only through the girl’s tenuous bloodline down generation by generation. Through difficult work, the aching tongues of her ancestors, the girl has become as familiar to the lost colors as to an old friend.

Blue, they told her, like the chill of ice on her skin, the melancholy lap of waves against her ankles at the beach.

Green, they murmured, like the rustling of leaves, or the harmony in finding someone who understand you.

Golden, they whispered, like the warmth of the sun during the summer, like the taste of apples in the fall.

Red, they chanted, like what you feel when you are the most angry you’ve ever been. Or the most in love.

On and on and on they would go, until the girl felt she had every color printed under her skin, beneath the very marrow of her bones. But that is no longer enough for her. It is no longer enough to allow the knowledge to endlessly hunger within her. No, the girl is quite frankly exhausted of harboring the craving that will never know satisfaction. Too much like being a child, and being unable to reach her favorite toy high upon a shelf beyond her reach.

No, today she works.

It starts in her garage. It starts with the petal of a flower. The flower is a delphinium, store bought and dehydrated, for she has not cared to place it in water. It does not matter. She only needs one petal.

She plucks the petal and discards the rest of the thing. From there it is only instinct.

She holds the petal in her hands and into it channels every word of her family and her family past—every golden whisper and fluttering green murmur, every moment of peaceful blue, every speck of love and hatred she’s felt in her life. She breathes in oxygen and breathes out distinction. The pump of her blood beats only in certainty, her heart pounds not for her survival but to produce the promise of recovery.

A gain, not a loss.

When she is done, and her instinct worn out, she opens her eyes. Then she opens her hands. Then she smiles.

She hears the voices of her ancestors, and they chatter in the background of her mind.

The petal is the chilly touch of ice, and the calm wisdom of the sea as it drags in and out forever. It is the depth of the ocean. It is not red, but it is love like the girl has never seen before.

Blue.

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 dwindle away.

She had never felt as lonely as she did now, though.

From the next room, guitar strings plucked a sad, sweet little melody. It was familiar to her. Everything about the house was familiar, but in the way a stranger you’d pass on the street was. In the way her reflection in the warped mirror between the stairs and the kitchen was.

It would be her brother, playing that familiar tune. Sheltered away in his room, the guitar weeping instead of him. She could picture it: his bent posture over the instrument as he sat cross-legged on the bed, his face turned away from any viewer. This image, too, was familiar in that sort of distant recognition way.

There was a soft ache in her chest as she surveyed the room. Just as her brother did not have the courage to emerge from his bedroom, she did not have the courage to go in and meet him there. Just as her parents slept upstairs, she embraced her subconscious mind that whispered to her that now was the time to leave.

It’s okay, it told her. It’s time to go. They will forgive you.

There was a single suitcase packed and propped against the moth-eaten sofa beside the daughter. Cocooned within it was a letter, a single artifact holding all the promises of the life before her. The life she would embrace as soon as she stepped out the door. It promised freedom. It promised escape. It promised a place where she would be loved.

Nothing in the letter spoke of a sad brother plucking sweetly at his guitar from the next room. Nothing promised the soft shift of her parents turning over in the bed upstairs as they slept. Nothing of the gentle familiarity in the wrongness of her own reflection.

It’s okay, her mind whispered to her.

With the guitar strings weeping quietly behind her, as she moved through the swirling dust like a shedding skin, the daughter—the sister—stepped out the door and became neither.

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 beneath me.

The moment I fell apart was before all of that.

It was the sunshine on her hair. Light illuminating the strands as she ruffled it with her slender fingers. It was her in front of the window, backlit by the glow that made her look almost angelic. Her laugh, painted golden by the setting sun.

That was the moment.

Funny how something so common as sunshine, which we see every day for all our lives, can bring a catastrophe to life.

This one cataclysmic beam of light through the window was all it took to break down the dam of words I’d kept carefully hidden for so long. It set loose all that I’d so methodically tucked away, and I couldn’t keep my feelings from roaring out in an unstoppable torrent of hideous truth.

After she was gone, the sunshine leaked through the window and coated my skin, until I broke open and broke down into it.

Funny how something as harmless as daylight can decorate even the deepest despair into a prettier thing.

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 speak while you tell me what you have prepared to say. I can tell you have prepared it because you do not have your usual pauses, the split-second moments of recollection where you consider yourself before continuing. Today, you say it all without a single break, though only to breathe. You have planned when to breathe between words. I can tell.

You, my dear, you were an actor before you wrote anything down. Before you were turned away one too many times, told you were not meant for the stage. I have always seen the performer within you. Even now, your words are rehearsed.

This, I think to myself, could be a play. That is how I will keep myself together while you list the reasons to me. We are being watched, and this is simply a fiction.

Maybe there is an audience of observers behind me, just out of view. They are silent breathers, silent absorbers of the story we bring to life before them. I cannot turn to look at them, though, because my eyes are fixated on you.

Was this how it felt, dear, to be on the stage? Torn open in front of hundreds of eyes? I have heard that in the very rare tragedy, an actor has died during a production. Perhaps this is where I will end up, too. Gruesome, lovely, my innards spilt across the curtains from the knife disguised in your words.

It turns out I do not have any lines in our play, dear. Even as you turn to leave, I have nothing to say. Perhaps I had lines, in the original script. But I have forgotten them now. Stage fright, I suppose.

It’s fine. You carry on without me.

The play is reaching the climax now. You are getting angry, though I still haven’t said a word. And then you leave to go.

This is my last chance. Our audience will be on the edge of their seats.

‘Speak’, they will urge me. ‘Say something, you helpless coward. You are being left behind!’

You close the door behind you as you go. A breeze drifts in the open window, chilled and reminiscent of the sea. Now, I suppose I am to leave the stage. Or perhaps I am meant to run after you, tell you to stay.

Oh, but dear, I am not the playwrite. I do not know how to end this scene by myself.

Curtains closed. Lights down.

Somewhere behind me, our audience breaks into applause. Do I smile? Do I give them a bow for the part I have played?

I think of you, of all you wanted, none of which ever included me. What lies behind me; that is where I find your prosperity. Where your heart will stay once our show is closed and the theater is abandoned. It will not be my hands you place your heart in, but the hands of those cheering behind me, the roses tossed your way.

Dear, you finally got your standing ovation.

Fin.

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 moment is your choice. The Alternative can be all things at once. That is why the Alternative is also a place.

Back up.

Is this making sense?

Keep moving.

The Alternative can be anything, but it cannot be a feeling. A feeling, The Feeling, is the only thing that exists outside the Alternative. The Feeling is not a place. The Feeling is what happens when you find the Alternative. The Feeling is what happens when you make your choice, which is why the Alternative cannot be the Feeling.

Between the Alternative and the Feeling, there is a brief space of Nothing. Nothing does not technically exist outside of the Alternative, because the Nothing is nothing, and therefore does not exist at all.

But the Nothing is not the Alternative.

In the Nothing, neither the Alternative nor the Feeling dwell. It is a small piece of reprise just shy of everything outside of it. It is a short breath of fresh air. It is the knot of tension in your shoulders, finally unraveling.

It is none of these things, because it is Nothing.

So now you are familiar with the basics. The Alternative, the Feeling, the Nothing.

They exist, or do not exist, in many different scenarios. They are always here, in one of their many forms.

Back up.

In this case, the Alternative is a place.

You see? We are getting there.

This place, the Alternative, is only partially physical. It is a public space, known only among the few of us who know these basics. Among only the few who have made the choice.

What is the choice?

You will soon encounter it. The choice is the Alternative. The choice is the stranger you pass every day on the street, or the one you see on TV, or the one brewed up in your coffee every morning. One day, this stranger make itself known to you. Your choice will be made. You will have met the Alternative, and then you may come to the Alternative, to this partially-physical space of few and scattered.

After you make your choice, you will meet the Feeling. Try not to stare too long. Some have looked and never unlooked. We do not wish this fate upon you.

You will never meet the Nothing.

In the Alternative, you have freedom. We will not see each other. You will forget what you have learned. You will forget the basics: the Alternative, the Feeling, the Nothing you have never met. This is getting complicated. You are getting lost. None of this is important. None of this is true. A madman’s blabber, and nothing more. Or perhaps you know it is true, because you have seen it all before. Perhaps this is your reminder of what exists, or, what does not exist.

The Alternative, the Feeling, the Nothing.

I’m this case, the Alternative is you.

Back up.