The Last Sunset

The last passing seconds of all the greater moments in life indubitably become in that instant; at once both the most beautiful  and most heartbreaking as the moment fades forever.

This was the last sunset.

The fact that she had chosen it to be so didn’t lessen the beauty of that garden in the sky. If anything the sheer grandiloquence of that aerial wonderland was amplified. Something about the way the colors and clouds swirled about the setting sun reminded her of fireworks, slowed down in real time to extend the brilliance of such a short lived splendor. The hills and far off groves rolled into the distant heavens where streaks of unnamed hues grew into the earth. Or did the earth grow into the sky?

The air was painfully fresh and smelled of summer - she breathed deeper than she ever knew possible. Wind rippled impossibly green sheaves of grass this way and that until she almost thought she could see some intricate pattern, a secret being passed from the air to the dirt. Her arms wrapped around, she drew her knees into her chest as the summer crickets began to sing a dirge, a moment’s hesitation and the night birds joined with a chorus of their own. A haunting duet, and she imagined they spoke of the complexities of existence, the simplicity of transcendentalism and oneness with the universe.

She relaxed then; in that revelation of their song, and laid back in the grass watching the stalks wave above her head, piercing the sky as they whispered their own interpretation of the moment back to the wind. Her heart ached in the absolute beauty of the moment, of the unadulterated artistry in the sky and purity of the earth around her. Transcendence was never so pure as it was in that infinite moment.

Beneath that last sunset - her last sunset, she tied off and sank into that perfect twilight.