Secret

Her eyes were closed, but they didn't need to be open for her to see. Her body, from her stomach and up, swayed side to side with the motion of which she had no control. The breeze that muffled her hearing smelled of mowed grass, but it gradually changed to the smell of sulfur. This had been the road she'd been on for over a year, nearly every day; sometimes she would actually be awake as she reclined in the passenger seat. She could tell, though, by the winding of the car and the smell of the old valley's swamp, where they have arrived.

For the first stretch of the way home from work, mere minutes felt like an hour. As the car slowed to a stop, her seat belt caught her corpse and kept it restrained to the seat where she swore she was not getting up from even when they got home. She felt so heavy and so stiff that even a car crash would strain to pull her from that seat.

Her eyes opened with a deep breath in of the pine trees they approached. The sun was setting over the opposite hill of the valley, and the sky was so wan, so complex, she couldn't tell if cloudy or if the sky was clear. What she did see was the lavender in the sky. so alluring, she mused. Some kind of mix between a saturated indigo and some kind of light lavender. It couldn't be photographed, there's no way. She wouldn't be foolish enough to try, either. She soaked it in. Her head followed the sight of the irresolute sky, limp like a rag doll, obedient like a sunflower. Before she knew it, she couldn't see it anymore; the trees were far too tall and too dense now. By the time they reached another clearing, it would be too late to see again, so she gave in and closed her eyes. She wanted to remember it. She wanted to remember the words and the colors and the feeling, but she would soon forget. It always happens that way, and there's nothing to be .

She would have painted it, she thought, if she were good enough at painting. She did not believe in her ability enough to try. It would, then, stay her little secret, until, that is, she decided to share it with the world, someday she could replicate it if she could remember the exact hue, the exact shade, the exact saturation, the exact moment, the exact intensity, and the exact inspiration that it gave her. It looked as if it should smell of lavender, with a hint of, who knows, blueberries? No, those would be too bold. Possibly something creamy and sweet like melted ice cream. Something she could pull apart and look at, something she could shove in her mouth and feel fizzle away like cotton candy.

To her, there were no words, and to her, that was okay, that was good enough. She would remember, whether she wanted to or not, whether she could picture or recreate the color or not, she wouldn't be able to forget how it felt to discover what felt like a brand-new color altogether, and hers alone. She wouldn't name it, because then it wouldn't be new, would it? It wouldn't be a secret.