__ would stare at the window endlessly, circling fingers over the ridges of the coffee cup, lost in some oblivion and then in measured movements sip the cold coffee over long intervals. I would be company, some odd times, sitting in forced silences, looking out at the spaces of natural green far beyond the window, those ended somewhere by the horizons of the hills in the faraway distance. Most evenings these distances turned from hazy green to light golden, then burning ember red and subsequently fading into an escaping dark. Such mosaic filled evenings our conversations were limited and our silences extending with the expanse ahead of us.

One of such evenings, while we watched nature changing glasses to beam different colors over a receding day,  __ broke the rule of silence and quipped, “do you realize why the day is in such a hurry to change form?” I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what to reply. We sunk into silences for many more minutes, __’s fingers circling slowly over the borders of the coffee mug, and then suddenly stopped.

“The day is actually a laborious human,

Burdened by the toil of fields.

And just when toil has turned to harvest,

It’s time for farewell and time to leave”

By that time the lights were already burning ember red, arch shaped flames glowing from behind the distant hills, where not a speck of green or any other hue was visible now. I often thought our placement decides our opinion and our light, like the diminishing of sun in one part of world would be the closure of a day while in the other part of the world the same would be day break.

Soon it was dark and in the arcs of evening, taillights were fleeing over lines of road, roads without addresses those ran like veins without blood. There was still some coffee left in __’s cup, turned cold by the fading evening light. Sipping one last potion of that evening cold coffee __ broke the silence “And the night?”

I waited for the answer from the seeker, again.

“Darkness is the cloak of night,

Giving refuge to those escaping light,

And when our toil has burned away,

The darkest hour will lead to twilight.”

For many of the following years I sat alone at that window, watching the day end in flames, but none to break the silence and tell me the meaning of these changing colors. _ never came back for that unending night, searching for a twilight in some other world.