Gloaming
I’m not sure why our minds select some moments to become memories and let others slip away
It’s not that popular of a word, gloaming. It isn’t even that useful. Words for sunset, dusk, and twilight already exist, why do we need another? It’s the type of word that you’d expect to be spoken on the campus of an English university, or found on the pages of a leather-bound notebook that’s carried cafe to cafe, espresso to espresso, by a student whose intellect often leaves him lonely.
I first heard it in the Mojave Desert. It was during one of those after-dinner games. The type that empties the last bottle of wine and sprawls blankets and bodies across couches and carpets. Players had to pull a piece of paper from a bowl and act out the word on it for teammates to guess before the timer expired. How does one act out gloaming?
I didn’t hear it again until a decade later. It was slipped into the second verse of a Florence + The Machine song. Despite its presence, I’d forgotten about it.
Gloaming is that transitory time between day and night when the sky splits in two and the dark east chases the soft west. It’s when the clouds look painted and transport you back to the Sistine Chapel, but this time without having to sneak photos or dodge men on mopeds offering “Rome like a local” tours.
