It’s been fifty-two years since The Bleaching – the moment when color was leached from the earth, leaving us in a world of ash and bone. Too long for most to remember anything else. Just long enough for everyone who can to despair that their frail recollections are all but run out.

When my grandma laments the former greenness of the pale grass, all I can do is shrug. What difference does it make if the world is bleak if I’ve never known otherwise? Sure, a lot looks pretty similar, but isn’t looking for nuance valuable? It’s not hopeless or devoid of character or meaning to me. It just is.

At least, that’s what I thought until I saw him.

I was visiting the cemetery to leave flowers on my father’s grave when I saw him kneeling by a headstone. The man’s long coat is dark – except, it’s too dark, or rather, not the right dark. It’s off, somehow. His face is hidden in shadow, but when he speaks, just a murmured “hello” to a fellow mourner, I catch a flash of teeth – too bright or again just the wrong bright, gleaming with a particular sheen I can’t explain.

And then he lifts his head just a bit, just for a moment, and I can’t help but gasp.

The man is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. His skin is … is … and his lips, too, but different. And his eyes, oh, his eyes, how do I describe his eyes?

“What – how – are you – ” My stammering trails off. What am I even asking?

He raises an eyebrow, those peculiar lips curving upward in amusement. “What am I? Grieving, sadly, same as you. How am I? In shock, but on the whole I’m doing well, thanks for asking. The fresh air helps.” His smile fades, leaving just a wry twist of the mouth. “It’s been so long since I’ve been asked that.”

“But – your eyes! Your skin! Are you radioactive or something? You’re, well, not glowing, exactly, but –”

He raises a hand to stop my words, tripping and tumbling and breathless. It’s gloved, the same too-dark not-dark of his coat. I stare at it. Would the rest of his skin be wrong, too? His nails? His veins?

“Not radioactive. Just … well, normal.”

Normal?

I stare at him. Watch the shadows and highlights play across him as he stands up, all so familiar but warped in a way that hurts my head the more I squint at it.

He chuckles. “Then again, perhaps I’m not considered normal anymore.”

I realize my jaw has gone slack in the absence of saying anything. I have so many questions, if only I could find the words! With effort I close my mouth.

“Well, I must be off. So much has changed since I left, I have to catch up on … well, I guess just the fact the world actually is black and white now. Whatever that means for us.” He glances at the flowers in my hand and sighs. A weary sigh. As though he is mourning more than just the person he came to visit.

He starts to walk away before I can process. When I do, I spring to my feet, stems crunching in a fist that is suddenly too tight, and sprint after him before he can reach the street. “Wait! You have to – to see a colorologist or something – that’s what’s so off with you, right? You’re colorful?”

The man glances back at me, grimacing. “Maybe. Eventually. Suppose I can’t really stay anonymous in this world, can I?”

My head is whirring too much, too fast. Colors. Real colors. It was like this all the time? My head would hurt so much if the world were like this all the time.

Yet, I can’t help it. I drink in the sight with the desperate gulps of someone bursting out of their tomb after being buried alive. I can guess what some of the colors might be from the textbooks: peach skin, probably, since his is more similar to light than shadow; red lips, then, if the skin is peach; a coat that is navy blue, perhaps, or purple, or brown, or some other dark color with its almost-black shade. But eyes could be so many colors. I don’t know enough.

“Please,” I gasp, “at least tell me: what color are your eyes?”

The question, my absolute ignorance, makes his face sad, but it’s still so mesmerizing I can’t get over the sight, would seize even only this expression in my mind over and over again if it meant I got to hold onto this one precious glimpse of what was. What could be. Could it be?

“Green,” he sighs at last. “Same as those leaves you’re holding should be.” He trudges away with shoulders slumped.

Green. I study the bouquet, suddenly so new and dejected and mysterious. I’m holding green, the man’s eyes, in each and every leaf. I hold them up to the dying sunlight, twisting them this way and that, trying to see his eyes in them, but they stay colorless.

But they were green. I can picture green now.

And suddenly my fascination becomes melancholy, looking at those barren leaves. Forlorn. Still delicately formed, still intricately detailed, but robbed of an otherworldly quality that once was a sign of their life.

Is this how Grandma feels?

I return to my father’s grave and lay down the flowers with trembling hands. My reverence is no longer just for him. I can give him the memory of green.

I sit there on the ground, a chill slowly stealing through the evening, scouring my memory of the man until every second is seared and I am certain I will not forget it. Then I pluck one leaf, careful not to rip it, press it smooth against my palm, and take it home with me.

The lost memory of green sits on my dresser. One day, perhaps, I will see it again.