She still cries herself awake in a sea of blue.

She howls more than she cries, as her husband once described. It’s like someone dug a well of sorrow right in the middle of her chest, and she’s been drowning in it but didn’t know it.

But she does know something that even her husband, her closest companion of the last 25 years, doesn’t know. She knows the real reason she ended up teaching children, and she also knows the real reason she stopped advancing her career. She also knows that her sky has been living in a shoebox for almost all her life, but that’s a story for another time.

Most of all, she knows the distinct metallic click as the door to the basement slides open and the precise wait time between the click and the alarm going off. She used to come home from work, having held up a dam of tears begging to break free during all of her waking hours. She would slowly enter the basement and park in her faraway corner spot, just enough distance from the door to the residential elevator. Instead of shutting down the ignition, she’d lock the car, crank up the stereo volume, and put on any Stephanie Sun’s songs. Most of the time, the third verse of “Cloudy Days”, sliding down the waterfall of piano notes, flowed perfectly with her unsuppressed wailing. She would hit repeat, again and again, as if revelling in a sick type of psychological torture. Each session usually came to an end 20 or 30 minutes in, either because her eye sockets and her lungs had caught fire, her soul had been wrung dry, or someone else had entered the basement.

First, there would be a faint beep as the key fob made contact with the tab. This could oftentimes be drowned out by her own bawling. Second, she would recognize the unmistakable metallic click as the hefty door was pushed open. In a heartbeat, the siren sound to warn passing cars of entering pedestrians would fill up the floor. That’s the split second she had to suck in as much air as possible to stifle her next sobs before anyone could hear or see her.

She would then quietly wipe her face off snots and tears, smear on some situational humiliation, and exit her panic room in the shape of a Toyota Corolla with haste. She would sling her work bag and purse on one shoulder and clutch a handful of plastic bags containing her kids’ dinner with her spare hand. She’d greet yet avoid eye contact with the neighbor that just entered as they crossed paths.

When the elevator shot up 30 meters into the sky, and when she crossed through the door into her house, she would put the lid back on her deep well of sorrow, the gaping hole drilled right through her bleeding heart.