Da Nang: Afterglow

Astronauts aboard the ISS see 16 sunsets from space every day, while the Little Prince once saw 44 by moving his chair a few paces, but it only takes one sundown, one quotidian scientific event of light refracted through particles in the atmosphere, to hurl me back into my feelings. And we get so many gorgeous ones these days…

Were you so very sad then, on the day of the 44 sunsets?

My favourite was among the very first. By the bridge, on the bleeding edges of a painting almost too bright for the heart to hold. Rose and flame and amber, reflected in the stillness of the sea.

There’ll be plenty more, you assured me, the carelessness of someone unburdened by time.

And there were. The one we watched in silence from the deserted beach that you had to carry me down to because my ankle hadn’t healed yet from tripping at a fireworks festival. That day by the rocks and the murmuring waves, gold that darkened into eventide. The sudden sunshine after the summer rain, warming the grass we lay on. Gilded clouds and a shimmering haze, scarlet streaks softening into flushed fairy-floss skies.

It’s something, isn’t it, you said over your shoulder, the first time we rounded that bend in the mountain road and the sunbeams burst from beyond the treetops, spreading lambent magic across the quiet bay and the city that curved along the far shore. I nodded before remembering you couldn’t see me. It is.

We were.