There was a song his mother used to sing to him. He couldn’t remember its name, or whether it had a name, or its exact words, but he remembered how he ached when she sang it—sometimes a song is not just the notes / but a license to dream—her voice airy as windchimes.
She sang about feeling alone while surrounded by people, a faraway look on her face suggesting she was back on her old research ship, daydreaming about wormholes and strange new planets. She sang about how memories are our imperfect way of travelling through time and space. About how, one day—we’ll reunite / on fields of purple grass / our tears like soft summer rain—everyone will finally understand each other. Here, she’d grow quiet, until he clamoured for her to sing it again.
Even as he got older, the song would never leave him, lingering like a windy day’s melancholic whistle, but his mother’s face would elude him. From a young age, he noticed that when something slipped out of his sight, his memory of it would soon fade, like how the morning sky so often forgets the moon when it falls out of its peripheral vision. In this way, he was just like his mother. His father would often chide her for asking if his business partners wanted tea and never returning with any, or for forgetting to send hologram messages home for months at a time while she travelled aboard the research ship—out of sight, out of mind.
Perhaps that’s why she rarely let him out of her sight. She’d spend hours watching him play in the meadow behind their house, him chasing dragonflies or swinging imaginary swords, and her sitting with a golden sun hat, arms wrapped around her knees in the rippling grass like a Monet painting. She smiled at him like no one else in the world understood her like he could. And it was true. He could distinguish her placating smile for in-laws from her contented smile for sitting in a grassy field from her joyous smile reserved just for him.
But he could never connect with other kids. Sweet, sweet child, alone in a crowd. They never seemed to say what they mean, complimenting his haircut, then ridiculing it when he turned around. They’d ask him to play hide-and-seek, then chase toy dronebots across the playground instead, leaving him to hide alone for hours in his perfect hiding spot. When he meticulously laid out Lego pieces for a spaceship, they’d steal them, and he’d float away from his body, perching on the ceiling to watch them snicker as they tore apart his creation. He’d soothe himself by humming the song, and only then would he find his feet upon solid ground again, seeking out a colouring book that he’d flip to a page with a towering castle. He’d fill in the castle lawn with the perfect shade of purple, but the kids would invariably find it and scribble over it with ugly green. He always accepted their casual cruelty until he couldn’t anymore and exploded, landing himself in the principal’s office.
If his father showed up, the two men would groan and sigh, lamenting the difficulty of children. But when his mother’s ballet flats squeaked on the school’s linoleum floors, he’d run out, ignoring the principal’s protests. She’d scoop him up and tell him it was okay. Not everything is in our control. We do our best / and hope it works out. Like how she spent those years on that research ship chasing time and space anomalies, and all she had to show for it was this song—yet here she was, happy with him in her arms. Still, he failed to understand how things could ever work out, not when other people were involved. So she’d sing her song to him again, words sweetened by her bittersweet smile.
Years later, when he’d try to picture his mother, he could only manage to pull up a faded image of the yellowing hospital bed that was crinkled like a sun-scorched field, autumn rays pouring over her as she wilted. His father had either been clasping his mother’s hands or standing with arms folded, griping about an ungrateful son who couldn’t shed tears for his own mother. By that winter, she had become too weak to sing, so he hummed her song back to her instead. She smiled, even though the song came out too wispy and sad with his timbre. Then, she let him out of her sight for good.
Just as he was the only one who understood her, he feared she was the only one who understood him. Without her, he was unmoored, a plant without its roots. He held onto the sound of her windchime voice the way someone would clutch a photo close to their chest, hoping he’d discover within the notes a hint of where he could find that purple grass.
He started to skip classes to wander fields barefoot, feeling the tender blades of grass brush his toes. Each one folded so easily under his feet. Yet, together, they bounced back, strong and supple and defiant. But if a blade were to be torn away from its root, what could it do except shrivel away?
•••
After his mother departed, his conversations with his father turned even more one-sided. His father would often ask him what his problem was, as if he could be fixed like an engine—as if it was just a matter of difficulty, whether it was a motorcycle engine or a spaceship’s sub-lightspeed drive. He would avoid eye contact, preferring to mumble a patchwork of remembered and made-up lyrics from the song and stare outside at the grass instead. Still, this never dissuaded his father from lecturing about the natural order of things, and how no one can hide or run from their problems, they must claw their way towards a better life for themselves—the way his father did, naturally. You’re not lost, you’re just not yet found.
His father never listened to music, claiming it disturbed concentration, but his father must have paid attention to some of his mother’s lyrics, because one chilly, overcast school day, he took him on a road trip—he’d been shirking school anyway. There was no planning, no discussion. They burrowed into their white Honda Civic and left town, the tiny sedan feeling cavernous without his mother.
On the long, straight arrow of the highway, his father allowed the radio to buzz for once with Top 40 hits, but the music all sounded flat. Holographic billboards zoomed past them, promising new hair, new friends, or a new home on a new planet. The cold springtime air fogged up their windows, so he swiped a forearm across the glass and stared out at all the cars. How strange that each car seemed to be an island, occupants sitting nearly frozen—quiet, disconnected.
The highway gave way to a country road, and farms faded into wild brush, until there were no other cars. He liked this emptiness better than feeling alone in a crowd. When his father caught sight of what he’d been looking for, they pulled over to the side of the road and got out.
“See? It’s purple, like in your mother’s song,” he said, his hand patting a tall tuft of grass at his waist like a pet. “Purple lovegrass.”
He didn’t usually appreciate what his father had to share with him, but maybe this would be different. Maybe his father finally recognized how important the song was to him. Reluctantly, he stepped up to the grass to take a closer look, cold air biting at his neck.
“Don’t tell me it’s not good enough. This is what you’re looking for. Now you can stop dwelling in songs and daydreams, and move on with your life like a normal person.”
He tensed at his father’s impatience. So breathe in the misty lights, close your eyes. He wanted to like it. He wanted it to be enough.
But it wasn’t. Only the tufts on top showed any purple. Tufts that would vanish in a week when spring storms ripped them away. Even the swish of wind through this grass was harsh and chaotic.
“How do you know this isn’t it?” his father went on. “You don’t even remember things you’ve actually seen! Tell me what you think purple grass looks like then. We’ll do an A.I. rendering. You can’t just say no—you have to propose a solution.”
He was already floating a kilometre high, watching his meaningless body sway like a headless dandelion stem. Slow down for a minute / let the melody of purple grass calm your doubt. He didn’t notice when his father dragged him back into the car and drove off. He was drifting on a fickle breeze, dandelion thoughts dispersing every which way, until one dwelled alone: if he couldn’t connect to anyone or anything in this world, perhaps he didn’t belong in it.
•••
So when he saw the hologram ad again years later, beaming down from the facade of an old art deco skyscraper, it seemed directed at him. The projection of a spinning planet, newly discovered and ready for settlers, spoke to him. “Is this world not for you? Your real home may be among the stars.”
“Unnatural,” his father had called his desire to uproot himself. With his mother gone, what roots did he have anyway? His father might be happier with him gone, a constant worry jettisoned into space. If his father loved him, it wasn’t in a way he’d ever understand.
The selection process proceeded in a repurposed hospital. As he was ushered through the many waiting rooms, that last conversation with his father echoed in his mind. His father had a knack for finding and unearthing the doubts he’d carefully buried away. This time, he didn’t scramble to bury them again. The doubts were not seeds that would ever bear fruit; they were malignant pits he had to leave behind to rot.
“You’re going to be stuck in a box for two years.” What difference would that make? He already felt stuck here, a solitary blade of grass planted in a desert. If his father had researched how long he’d be in transit, then his father must’ve learned how unlikely it was that he’d ever return. But if that had been his father’s real objection, the only hint had been the deepening creases on his father’s forehead.
He was funneled through various hospital rooms for physical and mental tests. Cold needles. Little rubber hammers. Memory tests administered in a spinning hypobaric chamber, his capillaries bursting into constellations along his arms as the force on his body approached six G’s.
“Space is dangerous. You haven’t thought this through.”
No, that was the problem. He thought things through too much. It paralyzed him. Like this IQ test they made him write in an old operating room, where he instinctively knew the answers but the seeds of doubt had made him second-guess himself that answers could be so straightforward. But he couldn’t think through the endless possibilities of a new world, and, paradoxically, it meant he could let go of attempting to control that uncertainty. It still scared him. Oh, it scared him, and maybe that was the point—he was tired of feeling numb. His mother had told him to try his best and not worry about the outcome, and stagnating here was not trying his best.
“You think they want a college dropout like you?” His father’s mouth had hung open, as if it had prepared a second sentence. Maybe his father had meant to add “but I want you.” A celestial thread / to tie together the stars of our hearts. But that sentence never came out, so he’d never know.
And somehow, the space agency did want him. In a thickly carpeted hospital administrator’s office, the interviewer questioned him with round and impassive eyes, as if she was looking straight into his head. And maybe she was, and that’s exactly why they accepted him—maybe she saw how much he needed this, saw that he didn’t belong in this world.
•••
The colony ship was a maze of dim hallways, cold steel floors pressing against his tender feet, the static hum of smart walls and metallic echoes of unfamiliar voices a poor substitute for insect chatter and birdsong. He wandered through these hallways only once, before he discovered the main greenhouse. To his surprise, the loamy scent of topsoil hit him like a breeze of nostalgia for Earth. He didn’t realize how much he’d miss even the plain green grass of Earth. The greenhouse displayed a kaleidoscope of greens dappled with colourful fruits and vegetables, even a splash of purple among the cabbage plants. He decided he would spend his days here, staring longingly at the tops of plants which were tucked away in neat white cubes to optimize food production and oxygen recycling rates.
The agriculture engineers and food scientists and botanists darted between stations like bees. He took care to step out of their way, even as he tried to absorb the scant view of the greenery. They didn’t even spare him a quizzical glance. But one botanist looked up from their observational study with interest, like they discovered a scraggly sunflower in the tundra.
“Do you need anything?” they asked.
“… No?”
They paused. “Do you… want anything?”
He looked at them in surprise. No one ever asked him that. But he wasn’t ready to share his mother’s song with a stranger. “… Some grass, I guess?”
“That’s an unusual request; usually people ask for a fruit or vegetable they can eat. What do you want grass for anyway?”
“I just like grass. I feel at home in it.”
The botanist grinned at this. “Everyone likes plants, right? But I like them better than people, even. Plants don’t lie.”
He found himself nodding.
“If they’re drooping or yellowing, they’re struggling. It’s never a performance.”
It felt like they voiced a truth he had always known but could never articulate. He didn’t say much after that, but they didn’t expect him to. This conversation, however brief, seemed to be enough sustenance for them, and the rest they could exchange through osmosis by standing in proximity. He liked that.
•••
The next day, there was a fresh patch of soil in the greenhouse. “Watch your step,” they said. “The grass seeds need to breathe.”
“Are they… for me?”
“These were supposed to be for establishing the colony,” they said. “But a handful of seeds won’t make a difference.”
They made a difference to him though. As the grass poked their little heads above the soil, he began to spend his days curled up next to this tiny refuge. He’d ensure optimal moisture levels for the grass, drop by drop.
He’d doze off next to the botanist, and his dreams would take him gliding over landscapes, across valleys within valleys, over mountains upon mountains, with impossibly green grasses tickling his toes.
“The grass is growing exceptionally well,” the botanist told him as they sat beside him, wrapping their arms around their knees as though they were looking out onto a meadow. “Could be the low grav, could be your constant loving care.”
His dreams changed. Thereafter, the grass stood two metres tall, deep green and translucent like strands of emerald. He’d wander the fields aimlessly, finding delight in getting lost, while hoping his dream self knew what he was looking for.
He wondered what drove the botanist to leave Earth. “People. Couldn’t stand them.” The two of them shared a knowing smile. “I got tired of networking at conferences, of fighting over publication credits and dwindling grants. I just want to grow and study plants, and I can do that here.” That smile again.
A figure started to appear in his dreams, and he felt a tiny bit less lost as he followed them over rolling meadows and meandering streams. Wherever his dream self was headed, he was moving forward.
Sometimes, he’d stir awake to the soothing swish of the botanist flipping through research journals. And when the botanist would grow frustrated with a stubborn strain of potato, he’d quietly sing his mother’s song to them. They didn’t poke or prod him with questions, but drew for him their favourite purple flowers in the margins of their notebook.
His dream landscapes started to bloom, rhododendrons and hydrangeas from the botanist’s sketches growing fractally until they towered over him like sequoia trees.
•••
Two years later, their ship reached the edge of their star system destination. The two stepped away from the greenhouse for what felt like the first time, wandering through the domed glass of the observatory wing where the captain stood impeccably straight, ready to deliver her final announcements.
The captain explained the effects of their imminent deceleration, their approach trajectory, and that the first glimpse of the planet’s surface confirmed rocky valleys and rivers of ice—but no observable plant life. Her voice droned on, discussing the other planets they’d pass on their way to their final destination, but he’d stopped listening after “no plant life.” He wasn’t yet ready for the countless possibilities he’d imagined to be reduced to just one—especially one without new plants and grasses to discover, even though he’d figured that this was the likely outcome. Out of the billions of planets, finding this habitable planet was already a miracle, and for it to also host existing life was vanishingly unlikely. But he hadn’t known it. Before, it was just a probability, an unresolved quantum superposition.
As the captain’s observations started to crystallize into his reality, he felt the numbness return.
Reflexively, he looked to the botanist and noted their sorrowful smile. When did he start understanding their facial expressions? They were clearly as disappointed as he was. Our hopes unfurling together under a white sky.
Sirens erupted from every hallway, and he clung to the walls, rattled, for he never fared well with loud noises. “Brace for a solar flare!” the captain shouted. One of the many dangers his father had warned him about. He hardly ever thought of his father, but now all he could think about was how his father, a man of action, would probably know what to do here. The ship shook like it was pummelled by a row of felled redwoods, and he slid across the room, crashing into a wall papered with star maps. The impact left him winded and crumpled in the corner, like he was hiding from the other kids again.
Instructions trumpeted over the speakers. An abrasive, mechanical voice repeating that their final destination has changed: emergency landing on the nearest planet. He tried to remember what life-saving details the captain had said about this planet. Don’t worry / if you forget—A white sky shrouded in silver clouds. Oxygen in the atmosphere. Enough?—it’s only a detour.
The rumbling of the walls grew thunderous, and beneath the sound, his mother’s words echoed in his heart. Not everything is in our control. We do our best / and hope it works out. Maybe he hadn’t done much, but he’d been brave enough to come along hadn’t he? This was the best he could manage.
The atmosphere tore at the hull with a deafening screech. Through the cracked observatory windows, he watched sheets of the ship’s titanium hull flutter away like dead leaves. The rising heat distorted the air as he pulled himself to standing, bracing himself against a bench. What was he supposed to do? And the botanist was nowhere to be found. How did he forget about them in such a crucial moment? Out of sight, out of mind. Like his mother. His mother. What did her face look like again? When times are unsure, follow my voice / travel on memory’s fickle wings.
But the botanist was looking for him, pushing past the other panicking passengers, their outstretched arm reaching towards him. They remembered him. Because wherever you’re going / you will find me there. He tried to run towards them, but rapid deceleration pulled him to his knees. The botanist’s eyes widened, unfocusing as if the distance between them felt insurmountable.
He was floating a million miles away, just a mote of cosmic dust with a strange sun at his back. The ship became a shrinking pinprick of fiery silver against a planetary disc, the cacophony of alarms and screams muted by the vacuum of space. Yet even here, the impact pierced the silence of space with a shimmering crash. Then the ship went dark.
•••
The ringing in his ears subsides as a faint melody wraps around him. Soft as butterflies singing and trickling down his battered body like silky threads of rain. His mother’s embrace lifting him onto his feet.
He stumbles towards the song. The ship’s main exit is a halo of light, its door plucked away in the impact.
There, they will know us / and we will know them. The botanist is already outside, lying on the grass. The purple grass. It’s just as he had imagined—you will find me there, where past meets future—endless fields ablaze with the passionate purple of a sunset after a storm. The soft blades sway like windchimes, rippling towards the horizon in time with his sobs. He lies down beside the botanist and meets the grasses’ warm embrace. His voice unfurls with the melody. His eyes trace his mother’s face in the sky. Her airy voice bringing back that familiar ache.
And never will we be alone again.
•••
Sweet, sweet child, alone in a crowd,
you’re not lost, you’re just not yet found,
so breathe in the misty lights, close your eyes.
For sometimes a song is not just the notes,
but a license to dream, a celestial thread
to tie together the stars of our hearts.
Not everything is in our control. We do our best
and hope it works out. Slow down for a minute,
let the melody of purple grass calm your doubt.
And when times are unsure, follow my voice,
travel on memory’s fickle wings. Don’t worry
if you forget, it’s only a detour.
Because wherever you’re going,
you will find me there, where past meets future,
our hopes unfurling together under a white sky.
Trust that we’ll reunite
on fields of purple grass,
our tears like soft summer rain—
there, they will know us
and we will know them
and never will we be alone again.
