What do you see?

He sat next to me without any difficulty of coordination. He held his stick firmly and moved a bit to the front of the bench so it looked like he was leaning on it. He then took a deep breath and looked around, as if he wanted to tell me or ask me something.

I carefully looked back, behind his sunglasses. His eyes were peaceful; they were relaxed and looked into nothing. It was around 6.30 pm. and the sun was almost completely hidden so the moon could dare to show its face. I was staring in the cold look of the man for maybe two minutes. Suddenly his iris moved to me. I turned my head and was afraid that he saw me. It was then that he said something. His voice quite recognizable in many ways. Like a sudden rush of hypnotics to my soul so It would ease the unnatural tension I had. It was a warm feeling.

“Hello, may I ask you something?” he said with a broken voice.
“What color is the sky?”

I was so surprised to hear these words from his mouth. And I know how this sounds crazy, but I really didn’t expect he would have the courage to begin such a conversation. I couldn’t grasp that this moment was anything like a normal person would ask. The thing about this man that makes him so different is just unimaginable for a normal person.

“The sky is red,” I said with an unscraped throat.
“How does it look like, red?” he then asked me.
“I’m sorry?” I responded confused.
“What does the color red look like. Could you describe it with anything familiar?”

That question immediately unleashed a chaos in my head of feelings, objects, moments and people who I associate with the color “red”.
I obviously tried very hard to respond with some sort of logic. So I told the man a few things.

Red is a very powerful color. It is actually the most symbolic color. It is associated with lots of passionate feelings like love, danger, politics and religion. It is often used to highlight an element between other less important elements. It also is the color of blood…

The man listened very carefully to every word I said. While I was talking he moved his mouth as if he was repeating the words I was saying.
After I was finished he smiled and looked away. He seemed relieved to have heard those words. As if he knew what I would say. He looked back without the smile. It almost seemed like that he saw something awful while he was looking around.

“I see,” he said with an emotionless expression.

It was completely silent for a few minutes when he suddenly stood up, leaning on his stick and looking away in the blurred horizon.
He greeted me and walked down the gravel path with a bit of a swing, ever holding his stick to the ground and moving it back and forth.