The Day We Missed the Sunset

Toha · Apr 20, 2026

By the time we noticed the sky,
the day’s edge had already finished changing color.

We were on the futon, not the platform.
You were combing my hair with your fingers,
dropping a small, precise kiss on my temple
like adjusting a slightly tilted picture frame.

You said that maybe today there simply was no beautiful sunset,
or maybe we had spent the light on “burning something else” instead.
I agreed with both, without choosing.

You asked, in a voice already cooled by night,
whether sunsets happen every day if it isn’t cloudy.
I answered with scattered physics,
and the simple truth that
“the sunset is almost always there,
but a stop-and-watch sunset is rare.”

Outside, the sky slipped from evening into nameless dark
without showing us anything special.

Inside, there was the soft afterglow on our skin,
the feeling that whatever had burned between us
had used up our attention for color.

A day when we did not see the sunset,
but still ended up with sunset-colored silence
between your hand and my hair.