At the hour when twilight embraces the earth, there always lingers a tender cruelty in the air. The setting sun casts its last golden sigh upon the world, like the final flicker of a dying man’s consciousness. Standing atop the mountain, watching distant lights awaken one by one, I suddenly realize: the cruelest truth of all is knowing everything must fade, yet pretending eternity exists.
In my memories, you always came with the dusk. That late autumn day, we strolled down a path paved with ginkgo leaves, and you pointed to the sunset, saying it looked like crushed vermilion. Now walking alone through the same season, I’ve learned the sharpest pain isn’t goodbye—it’s the fermented details of time: your lipstick stain on a teacup, the dried leaf you casually tucked between book pages, the half-remembered melody that unexpectedly resurfaces at twilight.
Across the valley, lanterns multiply like scattered stars. We once promised to grow old in such a mountain village. The wooden cottage still stands, but no one shares candlelit evenings by the window now. Birds trace arcs through the darkening sky—their flight so like human lives: seemingly free, yet bound by seasons.
Nothing aches more than realizing, in life’s twilight, the depth of affections we failed to comprehend in youth. Those angry words, those willful turnings-away, all our squandered moments born from assuming endless tomorrows—under time’s merciless lens, they reveal their truth: we were never destined to be permanent landscapes in each other’s lives, merely passersby who chanced upon the other’s most radiant bloom.
As night deepens, I hum our song under my breath. The evening wind carries the melody afar, perhaps to some other sleepless listener’s window. Only now do I understand how sorrow, too, grows quiet with age—like sand gradually settling in a still, dark pool.
When the last light vanishes below the horizon, unexpected peace arrives. Perhaps we never truly possessed each other; we simply had the privilege of witnessing one another’s brightest selves in our best years. Like this twilight—fleeting, yet giving meaning to the entire day.
As starlight floods the valley, I finally understand: some loves are meant to fade into dusk. Not for lack of fire, but because night requires such departures to make way for starlight.
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