The sun, cut by the blade of the horizon, slowly bled into the cool bath of the sea, and that blood painted the underbelly of the clouds with such banally dramatic color that one wanted to light another, even though the first one had not yet been smoked. It was between our fingers, the only thing warm in the cold, seeping through the thin jacket.

She inhaled the smoke. Slowly, as if weighing each molecule. Her cheeks dimmed just a little, and then she released a gray, fragile soul thread straight into the body of the descending sky. It was silent. I was silent too. The Grand Finale of Silent Film, where two failed actors try to play something that is long gone.

It's my turn. She put out a cigarette and I took it from her fingers. We barely touched. Her skin is cold. Like a stone lying in the shade all day. The filter was already slightly damp from her lips. I included. Pungent smoke. Bitter. I could feel my shoes slowly, grain by grain, filling up with cold beach sand. Legs get heavy. And maybe the soul. What a poet I am, my God.

The thread of smoke that hung between us broke. Now we each had a separate cloud, melting in the wind. The sun went down for good, leaving only a purple scar.

She took my hand from me. The last ember in it was like a small, dying planet. She didn't pinch it with her fingers. No. Slowly, almost ritualistically, he pressed her into the wet sand right next to the lazily creeping wave. There was a short, angry hiss—shhh—and it was over. The last heat died.

Then stood up.

And went. Her silhouette melted into the darkness until it became another vertical line between the sea and the sky.

The wave, lazily creeping up, washed away the small grave of the mist. I stood I had to go. But the feet, full of cold sand, seemed to grow into the ground. I stood in the dark, between the breath of the sea and the silence, and I suddenly realized that I no longer knew the way back.