On a quiet night in late November
I fell in love with a sunset. I grabbed ahold and rode
him into the night, but gradually he shed his vivid garb as if
it clung too tightly to his celestial frame. It’s nothing short of a shame because
what I adored the most were the enthralling ways his hues danced
pirouettes with precision,
softly staining my skin and sinking downwards and inwards,
tinting my innards with his alluring, warm palette.

But temporary tattoos wash off with time and cold water,
and the most psychedelic of colors will one day fade to a prosaic shade of grey.

I wanted to stay

But the starless black sky that he raised before me was filled
with unknowns and I’d rather be left alone than let down,
because I am only human.
So mortal that when he abandoned his dazzlingly
colorful mirage, I sabotaged every flicker of light that I’d learned to hold on to,
heedlessly metamorphosing until his dispirited shades of blue
became one with my shades too.

But I want to thank him for letting me in.
Because before him, I never knew how a color felt
or how it tastes.
And as I chased him across the horizon,
he taught me that yellows and reds taste like eating candy for breakfast
and feel like soft skin, akin to his own.  
And when he let his blues and blacks linger on my tongue and
occupy my lungs, it felt like tumbling down the most precipitous ravine
where at the bottom, unseen, the flavor of dirt overwhelms
your palette.  Like choking
until you’ve a head bursting with fears and muddy tears in your eyes,
obstructing your view of the most beautiful sunset our Earth has seen
in it’s years of being.

Thank you for helping me see.

And I can only hope that one night when the sunset has begun to die down,
you choose to wipe the dirt from your eyes and
become the sunrise.

Because just as colors fade, with time,
mud will wash away.