On the night I am explaining sunsets on my patio, all the ones I like the best, all those wild winter colors, or the oranges through trees in autumn, I do not tell the man about my nightmares, not too, of the dream I had of him walking away before he actually does.

This sunset’s late summer’s blue, trees swaying in wind, and when he hugs me I will no longer know how to hold him, think it best if I never had, if this is the last time I watch his car pull from the drive in the dark, him moving away from me. Because I can explain to him the sunsets, the shading of dark branches against the gold, but not this, never this, that shadow he casts across, long for years against my heart, all the colors I had dreamed that bore his name, not too how in bed, later, someone’s hip against my own, it will still be this I think of, how that night in the dark it is the first time I want him to go more than I want him to stay.

Tonight’s sunset is velvet, a sky tipping long into clouds against a moon, infinitely white and lovely, even in its shadow, the one that stretches long against its face. And in this darkness there will be quiet, other than the wind in trees, that unraveling of summer into autumn. And in that darkness I will remember his car pulling from the drive, and that last time he had held me, think still, of how I had, finally, wanted him to go more than I had wanted him to stay, will want tonight instead only for my heart to be my own, not someone else’s. How I had wanted it to be instead only unfiltered light, or like that of a sunset in winter, something wild.

Only something wild, infinitely bright.