Everything is grey and we are all alone.

The concrete jungles where we compete for our lives in are grey. The roads where we walk our paths of life on are grey. Dull and grey. The sky is grey and people’s faces are grey. The rumble of the city is grey and never silent, and it is ugly. Nobody smiles and we are all alone.

I look up and everyone is looking down, so I look down too. And I stay looking down at the grey floor beneath my grey feet and I don’t smile.

I do the same grey things every grey day, and I do them alone.

But one day I looked up and was caught off guard. I looked up and he smiled. He smiled at me and I stared back.

I look down and up again, and still he smiled. So I smiled back. I looked around and I saw others looking up, and I saw them smiling too.

I saw the vibrant colour of shop fronts with colourful items in their windows. I saw our roads stand strong under the people’s colourfol feet as they skipped through life. And they didn’t skip alone, they skipped together. Their faces weren’t grey, they emitted an effervescent glow that shone all around. Leaves are green and bark is brown. I squinted and saw the sky was blue... was anything grey? I listened carefully and heard the cities sounds come together in the swell of a symphony. It was never silent, and it was beautiful.

Not everything was grey, I had just been missing the colour. I had been too busy looking down.

I’d been so busy looking down, I never noticed everyone else was looking up, and they had been looking up at the wonderful colourful world together. Did they ever look down? Or did I just think they were?

He looked at me and smiled; and I was never alone again.

And I realised I never was.