A Well Of Orange Colored Sky

Floating up from momentary daze Claud shifts his head towards the window. Instantaneously he is confounded, besieged by an exceedingly effervescent orange sky. He hasn’t beheld, nor has he been somewhat acquainted with the breed of saturation or caliber of orange unfolding before his eyes. He concisely scans disarrayed drawers of recent memory for a stray flicker of recognition but his awe overwhelms him more to actually glue a finger on a particular remembrance he can associate with such blazing splendor.

He dares not to move, else the magic sputter out like tendrils of unpunctuated dream you cannot remember waking up. He is intoxicated, smashed with the glorious summer vista. In this delicious, enraptured state a certain sadness stirs in him. As if the tangerine sunset inaudibly awakens and creeps up on him like platoons of fire ants climbing his spine on frozen boots.

A faint shiver rouses him to sundry realities of stacked memos, briefings, and summarized statistics populating his desk while an obscenely priced monitor glints at him like a glacial menace, a reminder of how far he ascended from the mail room to a corner office. A dim smile hesitates at the corner unsure to inhabit his lips but like premature uncertainties quickly retreated into the sweet melancholia welling in his chest.

Summer births unprovoked sadness. It is not because of Claud’s incapacity to drink in its pleasures by intentionally favoring to fasten himself deep in burdens and obligations of a staunchly rising career, but because summer is a wistful reminder of sweet departures and unfulfilled desires of pledged reunions.

Deserting an oath is not where most of the hurt nestle itself. Claud figures this out like an idle epiphany choosing not to reveal its face prematurely. It’s the pleasures of little moments that are a testing struggle to get over with. Oreo smeared kisses. A soft, teasing nibble on a neck. Mornings embellished with familiar scents of home-tossed pancakes and caffeine wafting from diminutive kitchen.

Claud conceives of a possibility, a doubt, if there is human currency enough to wipe away the domestic nostalgia of folding laundered linen together over glutinous conversations concerning how pleasant it would be to book a one-way trip into the labyrinths of a Nepalese jungle together and not look back. Or how much wealth and ambition could compensate —or justify —discarding the gentleness of a cozy body drowsily shifting in a snug sleep and huddle closer to share mutual warmth on a rainy Tuesday?

These among other thoughts quiver in Claud’s head as he retrieves his gaze from the panorama melting into a hushed nightfall. He’ll take out Chinese tonight, he resolves.

Not before he allows himself a luxury of one more glance towards the thawing twilight, tidy up his desk and, importantly, his memory. He’ll shake off itinerant commemorative twines from summers ago before he descends into the cavernous lobby.

Then he would melt into crowds drifting under the roof of a perfectly calm summer evening.