Someone had once told you that when you breathed next to someone, you'd inhale a piece of their consciousness.  Bit by bit, they'd said, tongue over lips over the butterfly fluttering of eyelashes.  You'd see the world as theirs.  Your retinas would fold and unfold, dancing into two daring flip sides, coins of light.  The world would be vibrant, and you'd constantly whisper, I see.

     Space was abstract.  Sight was innovation.

     And yet you would think that waking up to a cold bed would be easier with time.

     But it wasn't.  Eyes would open in the morning to a cacophony of dismal white.  The ceiling had cracks.  Count of three hundred twenty-one.

     You remembered how she kissed you.

     You wondered if she, too, was stuck in the past.  You wondered if the color she had out of your life had been shoved into another's, if her sticky notes and trinkets adorned the walls and shelves of an apartment just like this one.  Sometimes you would find a small remembrance, perhaps a grocery list of some sort hiding under the bed, and you would drift back into saturation, irises splashed with prismatic brilliance.

     White was a lonely color, really.

     Sometime in your brain-dead college years you had understood that color encompassed a much broader sensibility than just hue.  That it was a personal choice how someone painted their world and what the colors they viewed it in meant.

     White reminded you of sadness, of bleached brick and glass panes.  Of the galaxy of city lights from your sixth floor studio apartment and the way yesterday's earl grey still sat in a mug on the kitchen counter.  It reminded you of forgotten art, young and waxy, and the nostalgia of the neighborhood bakery's outside tabletops where you and she would sit on Sundays, she with a croissant and you with a journal.  She would the chocolate off her upper lip, and you would write:

     Red reminds me of love and lipstick and time.

     But what about fuchsia? she would ask, Or vermilion?

     You would smile softly and reply, But I only have time for red.

     Then she would just look at you, look at you like a thousand words and kiss you.  She would kiss you, and lipstick stained and time passed and love blossomed.  And when you would part, giddy and breathless, you thought it was true, that you only had time for red.

     It was interesting how white set in quickly.

     Somehow through tears and talks, coffee dates endured.  And so you had found yourself sitting inside on one of those windy, typical Sundays--the usual dampness of the day hidden under the fold of an umbrella and the lusty smell of mocha.  A square of lemon cake had been on jaunty display at the table's center.

     And that's when she had told you she was gone.

     Taeyeon, she had said, I'm not Miyoung.  I'll never be Miyoung.  I'm Sooyeon you know, only Sooyeon.  But I can't--you can't keep stringing me along like this, it's not fair.

     The look in her eyes had been a deep indigo.  It spoke of sorrow on waking and fluttering eyelashes that blinked back tears.

     Look, she had said, I love you.  And I know you love me too.  I know that.

     Then why, you had whispered, Why.

     You love Miyoung, she had replied softly, You love Miyoung like breath.

     But Miyoung is gone, you had choked.  She is gone.

     Taeyeon, she had rattled out, her voice shaking, and your heart had nearly broken.  Taeyeon, I loved Miyoung too.  But, she continued, You can't love me in her place.  Miyoung is my shadow.  She walks with me.  You are still chasing her, and I... sometimes a person needs to feel chased after too.

     Coffee Sundays had never felt so cold.  Everything had subtly drifted into grey.

     I'm sorry, she muttered, as your eyes fell to black, I love you.

     And with the tinkling of bells and a fine mist on her shoulders, you hated yourself for not saying, Wait.

     But then she was gone, and you were thrown back to the time when she blew a leaf in your direction and told you to run, run as fast as you can, but I'll catch you, I'll always catch you.  She was gone in the wind, just like that leaf, blown away, forgotten.  Your eyes had stung.  You had not realized you had been crying until you tasted salt in your throat.  A pungent, heinous yellow.

     Your eyes had landed, striken, on her untouched caramel macchiato, the same one you had always ordered for the girl whose eyes crinkled into crescents.

     And maybe that's when you had realized you really did love her for Jung Sooyeon, and maybe that's when you had realized how horrible, how wrong you had been.  And maybe that's when it had bent your heart in two.

     Your mind had flared crimson, and you had sunk.

     You would find your way into white, color would find its way into dreams.

     Maybe in the future you would come into the same old coffee shop at the same old, appointed Sunday time.  And maybe your eyes would fall on a head of golden brown hair.  And maybe you would work up the nerve to go over and tap the woman on the shoulder.  And maybe you would say hi and smile, and maybe she would say hi and smile back.  And maybe you would ask what her favorite drink is, favorite band, favorite song, favorite color.

     And maybe you would ask, What about fuchsia?  What about vermilion?