"The Day the Sky Forgot to Be Blue"

The Day the Sky Forgot to Be Blue

By Hammad Gul

It happened without warning—

no thunder, no drama,

no sudden shiver in the air.

Just a slow dimming,

like someone turning down the volume of the sun,

like the world forgot the rhythm of its own breathing.

The sky turned gray,

but not the kind of gray that promises rain.

Not the soft hush-before-a-storm gray,

nor the romantic, windswept kind

that painters dream about.

No, this was the kind of gray

that felt like nothing.

Not heavy, not light—

just there.

Flat.

Lifeless.

A ceiling painted with indifference.

And I—

I stood beneath it,

waiting for a change that wouldn’t come.

The birds didn’t fly that day.

Or maybe they did,

but I didn’t look up to see.

I didn’t look up at all.

I was too busy

watching the sidewalk crack beneath my shoes,

counting the steps I didn’t want to take,

faking movement like it meant something.

My coffee turned cold.

I drank it anyway.

The news played in the background—

words floated around like dust,

but none of them landed.

Another war.

Another celebrity divorce.

Another child lost.

Another win for the stock market.

Everything felt equally far away.

I tried to write.

I opened a blank document

and stared at the blinking cursor

like it owed me something.

But nothing came.

No poem.

No sentence.

No feeling sharp enough to put into shape.

Just that gray again—

now inside my mind.

I told myself it would pass.

It always had before.

I told myself to go for a walk.

To eat.

To breathe.

But the air felt too thick,

like trying to inhale cotton.

And the sky?

Still gray.

Still unfamiliar.

Like it had forgotten its name.

I thought of calling someone.

Scrolling through my contacts

felt like leafing through old photographs

of people I didn’t recognize anymore.

Friends I hadn’t seen in months.

Conversations that stayed on the surface.

“How are you?”

“Good.”

“Busy.”

“Same.”

The day dragged like a bag of wet clothes,

clinging to my shoulders.

I moved through it

like a ghost haunting my own body.

Not sad exactly,

just… missing.

Like I was somewhere

just outside of where I needed to be.

At 4:12 p.m.,

a child outside screamed with laughter.

I flinched.

Not because it startled me—

but because I couldn’t remember

what that kind of joy felt like.

There was a time

when the sky was blue.

Painfully, impossibly blue.

Summer-blue.

Ocean-blue.

The kind of blue

that made you believe

you were alive,

even when it hurt.

But that memory felt like

a movie I once saw,

or a dream I’d woken up from

years ago.

I sat on my porch

and watched a leaf fall,

twisting in the air

like it couldn’t decide whether to fight or surrender.

It landed near my foot,

delicate veins spidered across its faded skin.

I envied its grace,

its quiet ending.

I used to think depression was loud—

screaming, weeping, collapsing on the floor.

But this—

this was different.

It was silence so deep

it echoed.

It was standing still

while everything kept moving.

It was the sky

forgetting how to be blue.

And yet—

just before dusk,

the clouds began to shift.

Not dramatically.

Just a soft unraveling.

A pale sliver of light

slipped through the cracks,

barely enough to see,

but enough to notice.

The kind of light

that doesn't warm,

but remembers how to try.

A single bird

cut through the horizon—

not soaring, not graceful,

just moving forward.

And I followed it with my eyes

until it vanished

into the unfinished sky.

That night,

I lit a candle

and wrote a line:

“The sky isn’t always blue, but it hasn’t forgotten how.”

I sat with that thought.

Let it wrap itself around me

like a coat left behind

but still carrying the scent

of someone who once loved me.

The sky stayed gray.

But now,

it felt less empty.

Now,

it felt like a pause,

not an ending.

[End]