I sit on the porch watching the sun slowly settling down for a night’s sleep. I can hear the birds rushing to their nests, their clamorous chirping and frantic whirring. As always, strange calm spreads through the air at dusk. The last fourteen years since I retired, I sit out on the porch. My soulmate used to accompany me until the day she left me.

The chair rocks gently. I take small sips of tea from my favourite cracked mug. She hated this black bitter concoction, yet lovingly took a single sip from my cup and grimaced as she swallowed. Probably she tried to make the cup of hideous spew a little sweeter for me, with that one sip. Without her, it tasted noxious, and still I persist with this ritualistic habit.

The sun tries its best to shine a light on the mysteries of the night one last time before he disappears, as the earth prepares for the long slumber ahead. The orange glow hides more than what it tries to uncover. The silence that ensues amplifies all the echoes of a world otherwise lost in the day’s din. I can hear the creaking. I can no longer distinguish if it’s the creaking of my chair or my old bones. Though it’s oddly comforting.

Nowadays, I cling on to any moment I can recollect, desperately trying to hold on to life. Don’t mistake this for desperation, as an old man’s stubbornness to accept fate. I am not holding on to life like a drowning man. I only attempt to allow myself a semblance of a life I knew, as I fade into the sunset. I wait patiently for the infamous hand of death. She didn’t tell me if it was hot or cold. She just left, smiling as always, just like the day I first saw her.

To be Continued…maybe