Spotting Foxes at Twilight

A short reflection I had after sunset

Jun 30, 2024

Twilight produces a sweet kind of loneliness. The beeping and sawing of the construction site would fall into silence, the gentle hush of traffic would echo in the kitchen, and a blackbird would sing as the colors of things dimmed until nothing remained of them but varied shades of grey.

There’s a German word used to describe the genre of literature and films made post-1945 that reflect on the war: Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which translates to something like “coping, thinking about, coming to terms with, working through, and understanding the past”. For me, twilight embodies this feeling perfectly.

Like a ghost suspended between two worlds (neither night nor day), twilight is a minor crisis that has not been allowed either to live or to die and so it knocks on the door of my consciousness, asking for solutions to unformulated questions. For many, Sunday twilights are the most haunting because the thought of going back to work provokes deeper reflection on career and vocation.

The earthiness of twilight makes me think of all the times I’ve done something wrong and how it took someone’s forgiveness for me to move on. And the things I got away with — things that I did while knowing it was wrong — would never truly leave me; days, weeks, and even years later, it would pop into my head without warning, making me search for mercy in random places like a hand rummaging through a cluttered bag for a lip balm that might’ve been lost.

I spot foxes at twilight, their red, slender bodies whisking through dewy grass and green tomato vines, their black-socked toes making untraceable kisses in the dirt. They slip through the thin indigo veil of the churchyard with their heads ducked low and the silhouettes of their tails etched in onyx against the fading light.

Then, they disappear, and I slip into my blues.

— S.