Do you see the sun?

“Cloudy skies today in the city, the sun nowhere in sight,” the broadcaster’s bellowing voice echoed from the small TV on her kitchen counter. “Going on thirty years now without it.”

Her brows scrunched in opposition to the words. The woman looked up from the soapy dishwater filling her sink to the window just in front of her. The sun shone brightly, penetrating into her kitchen—reflecting against green glass bottles in the windowsill, glaring against the full sink, warming the rug beneath her tabby cat. She raised a hand, letting it dance in the light. The sun was shining, that much she knew. And she knew it had shone more times than she could count in the last thirty years. At least the years she was lucid for. The woman shook her head as if to clear it, finishing up her washing.

With the house clean and waiting for her arrival home, the woman set out to work. Her outfit was simple, a fitted shirt, flowing skirt, sandals, sunglasses. As she walked down the block, she noticed the juxtaposition of her outfit against those of the other pedestrians. They wore coats and gloves, hats and boots. Her eyes squinted against the bright rays as she once again found the sun.

An older lady in blanketing layers sat on a brownstone stoop, trying to light a cigarette. She cupped her hands against a phantom wind, fighting to ignite her lighter. “Excuse me, ma’am,” the woman said as she approached the steps. “You see the sun, right?”

The older lady laughed a crackling cackle. “Yeah. Right. Sweetie, I don’t subscribe to all that.” She kept chuckling to herself around the now-lit cigarette hanging from her lips as the woman walked away.

Stopped at the crosswalk at the end of the road, the woman stood next to a mother who bounced a whimpering baby on her hip. The mother shushed rhythmically to the baby, rocking up and down, back and forth. The woman whispered, “I’m sorry, ma’am, excuse me. I don’t mean to bother you, but…do you see the sun?”

The mother grit her teeth and seemed to fight off an eyeroll. She looked to the sky instead. In a matching hushed tone, she replied, “I guess if you really squint you could see some kind of light. But, no, I don’t.” The white lights of the walking figure turned on, and the mother sped away.

Continuing on through the crowd of the city, the woman began to question. Not herself but her approach. She started to think it wasn’t about if everyone else could see the sun she saw but if they even believed in it at all. The double beep of a lock came from her right, a young man in a suit coming around and stepping onto the sidewalk. The woman tried a different way of going about her inquiry. “Sir, excuse me, do you believe in the sun?”

The young man pulled a wireless earphone from his ear, gesturing around with a to-go coffee cup. “Lady, if there was a sun, why would it be so dark around here?” He hardly stopped walking to address her and kept his gait progressing toward the building beside them after answering. He swung through a revolving door and out of sight.

The woman surveyed the area, heat waves blurring over cars in the distance and shadows of trees dancing across the pavement. She didn’t understand, but she went on. Entering a coffee shop, she stopped short, assessing the patrons. How many of them didn’t believe in the sun? Didn’t see it, didn’t feel it on their skin, didn’t soak it in as they gazed at the sky? It made her sad to imagine.

At the counter, the woman ordered an iced coffee and sat near a window where the sun shone ever so slightly on the wooden table. She sipped her drink, the condensation pooling across her fingers and on the table beneath. A married couple around her age passed her on their way to leave, and she couldn’t help but to ask them. “Hey, excuse me, do you two believe in the sun?”

The husband tucked his wife behind him as they turned to face the woman. To his credit, he seemed to think about the question longer than any of the other folks the woman had questioned that morning. “You know, I grew up thinking the sun was real, and I would wear sunscreen and play outside in the heat,” he snickered at the word. “Then I actually grew up.” He grabbed for his wife, entwined their ring-laden fingers and strolled away. The wife spared a glance back at the woman, but the woman could not determine her emotions.

Sighing and holding back tears of frustration, the woman finally began to question her own belief. But the sun was right there. How could she let people tell her it didn’t exist? She headed back outside. Immediately, she noticed—the sun was gone. The woman shook her head as she glared in confusion at the sky. Turning her back to where the sun once lurked, she wrapped her arms around her body, feeling all too suddenly chilled.

But as she resigned herself to the dark day, she saw two conflicting flyers on a nearby telephone pole. A bleak gray paper showed the forecast for the next week—cloudy, dull, stormy, cold. Pasted across the lower corner of the pessimistic page was a bright yellow sign. In bold letters, it read: THE SUN STILL SHINES.

The woman’s eyes dropped to the ground, where she saw her shadow painting the cement. Looking up over her shoulder, she saw the sun was right where she left it, there the whole time. Trying once more—now more for curiosity than belief—she asked a passing child, “Excuse me, do you see the sun?”

The child’s father scooped the kid up and continued to stride down the sidewalk, throwing over his shoulder with a smile, “Yes ma’am, we do.” Both of them had on shorts and ball caps, she noticed.

A smile of her own began to overcome the woman’s features, but it disappeared as soon as it came. A teenage boy who overheard the conversation followed up. “Don’t listen to that freak, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The sun doesn’t exist.” The woman hardly heard him, though. She was distracted by the glistening sweat across the teenager’s face.