Sunsets
written by: Susan Temple
To feel everything a thousand times is too much. Too immense. To feel every sadness the world possesses and to be helpless to know its solution is slow torture. You want so much to feel lightness and to be at ease. You realise now that the time for that is gone. That is for the young, when you were able to dream of endless happy days and never-ending adventures. When you loved the world and believed it might love you too. When there was nothing that could not be achieved or strived for on this earth.
Then, like dust permeating your lungs, specks of sadness and disappointment started to settle over the landscape of your soul. Your dreams change at first, morphing and adapting. They are not as vibrant as before. Your breathtaking sunsets were blocked by high-rise flats and ominous storm clouds. Your rainbows gradually faded as if a figment of your imagination. Until eventually a fog covered your whole heart and consumed your mind. Confusion and loneliness embedded into every crevice. Your fingers felt for some trace of the hope from the past, but thick layers of grime and dirt covered them – most broken, never to be mended this lifetime.
It’s dark now.
You brush against a young stranger on the street and see, as they pass, the shimmer and delight in their eyes of being abundantly alive. Nostalgia courses through your veins – causing nausea to rise. Your eyes brim with tears, and your heart aches. Oh, to bottle that exhilarating-alive feeling, the one you cannot retrieve, no matter what you do. Would you use it all in one moment? Or sprinkle just the tiniest amount into each remaining day?
I envy the lovers, dreamers, and children.
For I used to be one.
Until the day He arrived.
- Sunsets - September 6, 2024
- Bea’s Farm - March 13, 2024
