Twilight | Poetry

I went walking under trees

that didn’t care whether I noticed them or not.

Green everywhere. Too much, maybe.

Monkeys argued in bursts,

sharp sounds cracking the evening open,

as if they knew something

the rest of us were late to understand.

The light thinned.

The sun slipped away without ceremony.

Standing there, I felt it again—

that familiar weight of feeling lost in life,

not dramatic,

just persistent, like a question

that refuses to become clear.

What does the sun leave behind anyway?

Something bright hovered somewhere behind me,

a half-remembered rainbow perhaps,

already fading, already irrelevant.

I didn’t turn around.

Some things disappear faster when watched.

So much has passed—

entire centuries folded into names and dates,

people born into promises

they never got to keep.

And still the cuckoo sings,

unaware of failure,

untouched by the fear of inadequacy

that makes the rest of us hesitate.

I pulled my shoes tighter,

as if that might help me stay put.

The warmth lingered longer than I expected.

Birdsong grew louder, stranger.

Instead of comfort,

it stirred something uneasy—

that old sense of feeling out of place in the world,

as though beauty had arrived

for someone else.

Why did it bother me today?

Why did I feel the urge

to choke the moment before it unfolded?

I stood there, stalled,

caught between listening and retreating,

already lost in my own thoughts.

Later, I thought of the great ones—

how easily their lines seem to breathe.

I kept writing anyway.

Line after line. Some stuck together,

some fell apart.

No silk, no music.

Just the mess of trying

while doubting the attempt.

I was never shaped like Wordsworth.

Splendor doesn’t slow down for me.

Fear doesn’t arrive with warnings either.

I remain there, in that uncertain hour,

caught in a quiet search for meaning in life,

unable to settle into the scene,

or step fully away.

By the time I turned back,

the light had thinned to almost nothing.

I carried home what I could—

unfinished lines,

small bruises of thought,

and the dull awareness of feeling disconnected,

still feeling lost in life,

but not entirely asleep to it.