The sunset has always been something special, the way the colors soak inexorably into the sky every evening, blending and feathering outward like different colors of ink dripped onto a paper towel. It is never quite the same, but always you get the feeling that it is exactly right; never to much of one color, or another, but just as it is meant to be, every evening. And for that moment, you know, where the colors hang in the sky for just a moment, completely saturated, just before the sun finally slides below the horizon and the colors begin to darken and fade to twilight, that moment is eternal. Time doesn’t stop, you can’t live in that moment forever, it slips away like everything else in this world, but the sunset is like a great stained glass window to eternity and for just a moment, when all the panes line up together, you can glimpse through into eternity, just for a brief instant.

Eternity calls to us on some very deep level. It is not that primal instinctual level that calls to our bodies, but the level that resonates with the chords of you soul and sets everything vibrating with those overtones that just escape the ear. The ones that you can’t quite capture in your ear no matter how hard you are listening for them. The ones that you hear in the same way that you glimpse something out of the corner of your eye. You can’t quite hear them the way you want, but you know they are there and you feel that they are right somehow, so you revel in the way they ring and in the things that set them to vibrating, because you recognize the resonance of the eternal with that one small piece of eternity inside of you.

Life is sort of like a sunset. It unfolds the way it is meant to and there is nothing you can do to stop it, or hold onto it past its time. The sun rises in a glorious splash of gold and bright colors, then eventually it sets in a beautiful and spectacular promise of eternity, and inevitably, the gold fades into twilight and into the inky night. There is a lot of living to be done during the day, but the parts you remember, those parts are the sunset. I like to think that people make up those parts. Even if they are flawed, even if they are no longer there, the good that was imprinted into your soul by their presence in your life, those are the colors of your sunset. You can only hope to bring a touch of sunset to someone else’s life through living. Some people never do, and sometimes it isn’t even their fault, maybe they were just never given any paint. Some people are artists and splash wonderful colors wherever they go, a whole palette full. Some people just have a little pain, a solitary paintbrush with only a touch of paint on the end.

I don’t know which sort of person you are, not for sure. I like to think that you touch everyone with a bit of color, but I know that you have at least been my touch of sunset. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but no one has ever touched my soul the way you did. I used to think that sunset meant those memories that I keep tucked away in a beat up shoebox that has been dragged through countless moves. The things that I take out every once in a while, and smile, and maybe cry a bit, and then put them away and slide the box back in its drawer, neatly, to be taken out the next time I want to remember. But twilight is the time for memories, for thinking, and remembering, and hurting for what is lost. Sunset is the time for those things that are burned brilliantly into your soul in a different way. They aren’t memories exactly, they are something more, a part of you. They are a brilliant reflection of all the good in your life. That is what you did in my life, you were my touch of sunset, maybe the only one that I get, I don’t know, but without you, I never would have known the sunset from the twilight.

You stayed for a while, a year, and I had a year of sunset, a year of eternity and color. I think that is why it shocked me so much when you left. It is sort of a shock each time you realize that the sun has passed the horizon and disappeared, even though the sunset hung in the sky for only an instant, and you were in my life for much more than an instant. It left me reeling when you left. You faded into twilight and my sunset slipped below the horizon. You were still burned into my soul though; I couldn’t take you out and put you away like normal memories. You were always just there, only slightly beyond reach now. I felt you presence in my life always, but now I lived off of the memory of the last time your arms wrapped around me rather than the reality. I lived off of the memory of that resonating chord that I could not find again on my own. I lived off of the memory of that spark in your eye, and the fire that it lit in my heart, not even just for you, but also for life. I lived off of these things because it was the only way to live. You were still there, just not present anymore.

I never tried to hold on, because just like a sunset, I knew it would do no good to try. I felt the pain of loss, and the confusion, and the despair. And I felt silly for feeling these things. It wasn’t even just loosing you; you were the first person that made me feel unequivocally wanted. Not for something that I could give, just for me. And I discovered that I wanted that. And now I just feel silly; like a silly heartbroken girl for wanting to be wanted; not for something, not romantically even, just wanted. I was left with nothing to fall back on and no footing. I was just falling, stuck feeling small and absurd, betrayed by my own feelings. I couldn’t trust my feelings, I had no one to tell me where I was anymore and I was alone. So alone that I couldn’t explain, couldn’t have told anyone if I had wanted to.

Now I guess I just feel glad; not happy exactly, but glad. I am glad that I got to see the sunset, and glad that I got to hear the music, and glad that I got to know happiness. I don’t regret any of it. I don’t hold leaving against you anymore than I begrudge the sun for setting. Twilight is beautiful too, and you are that color right at the forefront, the one I can’t quite capture or describe. It is a sweet kind of pain that has a flavor all it’s own. It isn’t a bad pain, just the pain of what has been. I can only hope that someday I can be a touch of sunset for someone, because I think that it might be the greatest gift you can give someone