The swiftlets were out foraging as the sun went down slowly, hiding behind pink clouds. It was the time of the day when the sky looked as though splash painting--pink, purple, orange, blue and white, on top of each other. I was sitting on a stool outside at the verandah, listening to silence ringing in my ears while disregarding the city noise. She fell asleep in the living room and had missed the last scene of Wild--the good part, where Cheryl Strayed reached Bridge of the Gods. She must be tired.
Do animals have emotion? I thought, watching the swiftlets. Sure they do, science had proven it. But insects don't--how do we know this for certain? I looked up into the sky, thinking: how far is the sky from here...
"Where's my lighter?" She said.
"Oh...you're awake...It's here."
She lit her cigarette, sat down on the floor next to me. Her hair, dishevelled, her face oily. She spaced out in deep reverie as she smoked. We sat quietly for a while, both watching the clouds moving and changing colors.
"You know when I was young I used to follow my dad to the soccer field," she said suddenly, looking into the sunset. "It was boring...I was not interested in soccer. I remember...so vividly...lying down on the grass while waiting for him and his friends finished playing. I looked into the afternoon sky, hardly. I noticed the blue sky first...so far away...and then the white clouds, a little closer to me...that's when I learned that the sky has layers," she laughed. I laughed. And we both went quiet again.
"How far is it really?" I asked.
"What?"
"The clouds from us...here?"
"Far...far enough to make one wonder," she said.
"You see, if we are here and the sky and the clouds are there. What separates here and there?" She said nothing. I waited.
"In the next life...if reincarnation is real. I want to be a bird," she said and then lit up another cigarette. Silence.
"I'll be the wind," I said.
"Wind?"
"Ya, wind...why?"
"The wind is dead...I mean, it's not a living thing."
"How certain are you with that statement?"
She smiled. "You know what?" She said, "nothing separates here and there."
"What about these spaces...these locations?"
"I don't know...You see the clouds and sky?"
"Ya."
"And you see us here sitting?"
"Ya?"
"Everything is here right now...there's no 'there'--there is a place our eyes can't see."
"Like the time when you were lying on the grass looking into the afternoon sky..." I said.
"The past? Sure..." she smiled. "Memory..."
Silence.
It was getting darker. The wind was getting colder, the swiftlets were still dancing in the twilight.
"We're here now..." I said. "In motion with time into the unknowable future..."
She smiled, "Ya...beautiful sunset, right?"
"Ya."