Night Wind

I have always felt, since childhood, that death ought to arrive at night. Perhaps a death under bright light feels too lucid, too conscious. Yet the truth is that most of us cannot choose the hour of our death—nor even the season in which it comes.

On summer nights, the wind brushes against my half-dreaming, sweat-dampened skin, carrying with it a coolness so pure it seems to empty the mind. If I let myself drift along that thread of sensation, there is a quiet release, as though the soul were being carried away by the wind. Because no one truly possesses the experience of death, this, in my private imagining, feels like the closest one might come to its idea.

Yes, the wind at night has the power to carry everything away. Things lose their former shapes, grow indistinct, perhaps vanish altogether.

The wind at night is gentle. Perhaps death is, too.