it’s spectacular

Sometimes you just stand in your bedroom with the lights off and remember this very specific sandwich shop from two years ago that felt like the end of a feel-good summer movie, but that was on an island and there’s nothing but darkness outside the window, so you wander to your laptop just to stare at the blinking cursor and wonder about everything.

I have to tell you guys about tonight’s sunset. I was on the front porch, not doing much of anything, just sitting with Maude and watching the sky darken in a promising fashion, when suddenly the angry clouds opened up and a torrent of sideways rain came riding across the pond and then the trees and then the patio and then me. The storm battled itself for a good long while, finally leaving the whole world windblown and glittery and somewhat uncertain in its newly washed state.

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Maude and I ventured into the freshly cleaned hayfield just as the sky dragons started their work of lighting the clouds on fire. While Maude wandered off to the blackberries, I explored a forest of waterdropped weeds taller than my head, half-listening to the distant conversation coming from our neighbor’s backyard. Everything was lit up in a clear shade of orange and it was all so very, very still.

I eventually left the forest and followed the hayfield path to a single soaked haybale, which I climbed on top of and somehow became even muddier than I was before. Maude acted concerned about my newly attained height while I confirmed my suspicions that view from here would be spectacular.

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At the house, the kids were at the edge of the pond, breaking the perfect reflection of the sky with a soft splash of their fishing poles.

“Whoa! Did you see that bullfrog? And look at the sky!”

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Everything felt soft and wide and full of the gladness that comes from experiencing so much beauty and having someone else to appreciate it, too.

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The light held its color even as the first stars began blinking to life—and now I’m remembering this quote in an old journal, roughly paraphrased from Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman: “It occurs to me that the darkness must love the light, but one is always destined to kill the other.”

Maybe this sunset and my half-asleep words brought some peace to your soul. I wish you all could’ve been there to see it. ^_^