Steven London is participating in the International Literary Creation Competition, 7th Edition, from Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria and is 41 years old. We thank him for his participation and wish him success.

Gloaming

Walter Allen arrived at the park every evening just before the streetlights came on. The nurses at Idlewood Memory Care had stopped asking where he went. He always returned before dark, carrying the same paper bag of stale bread after sitting on the same bench beside the pond.

Tonight, the sky faded blue into gold. Children meandered home through the dimming streets, and somewhere nearby a screen door slammed shut.

“You’re late,” a voice behind him spoke.

Walter turned.

The young man standing there looked cold despite the warm April evening. Thin shoulders beneath an old army jacket. Eyes dashing among the trees, parked cars, and passing strangers.

Walter smiled apologetically. “Sorry.”

The young man sat beside him but kept angled toward the walking path. Walter tossed crumbs toward the pigeons gathering near his shoes.

“They’re circling again,” the young man said.

“Who?”

“The cars.”

Walter glanced toward the empty street.

“You can hear them better at night,” the young man whispered.

Walter nodded politely. “Must get tiring.”

The young man chortled. “You used to say that too.”

Walter studied him more carefully. Something felt familiar in the nervous tapping of his fingers.

“You taught English at the high school,” the young man said. “Every October you made your students memorize Robert Frost.” He looked toward the fading sky. “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

A fragment weakly stirred in Walter’s mind. Nature’s first green is gold … Then it disappeared.

“You told them the poem wasn’t sad,” the young man continued. “You said people confuse endings with failures.”

Porch lights flickered beyond the trees as Walter watched the last sunlight burn across the pond.

“You ever notice this time of day?” the young man asked quietly.

Walter nodded slowly.

For the first time, the young man smiled.

A jogger passed nearby. The young man tracked him until he vanished around the bend.

“I used to come here when things got loud,” he said. “At first, it was only at night. Then, mornings too.”

Headlights slid briefly through the trees bordering the park.

The young man stiffened.

“No.”

The word cracked suddenly from his throat. Birds erupted from the reeds beside the pond, wildly scattering across the water. A few people along the path turned to stare. The young man pressed both hands against his face, breathing hard.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I thought they stopped.”

Walter lowered his eyes.

“You know what it’s like trying to survive your mind every minute?” the young man asked.

“No,” Walter admitted. Then, after a moment: “Maybe I forgot.”

Silence settled between them.

From somewhere across town came the faint sound of a baseball game on the radio. Walter remembered bicycle tires hissing across pavement. Baseball cards clipped to spokes. His mother calling him home through a screen door at dusk.

“What’s this time called again?” Walter asked softly.

“Gloaming,” the young man replied.

Wind moved through the maple branches above. The young man scratched absent-mindedly at the inside of his left wrist. Walter’s breath stopped.

A thin white scar crossed the skin there, hidden where a watchband would cover it.

Suddenly another memory tore through him: seventeen years old, locked in a bathroom, blood in the sink, his father pounding on the door – yelling not to bleed on the towels.

Walter stared at the young man.

The tapping fingers. The fear. The exhaustion.

The young man looked exactly how Walter remembered feeling.

“Oh,” Walter whispered.

The park, nearly emptied now, lay motionless as a little girl passed by, holding her father’s hand.

“Why’s the sky that color?” she asked.

Her father looked up. “Because the day is tired.”

The young man’s eyes fixed on the bench’s reflection in the dusky pond water.

“You left.”

Walter looked at him for a long moment. “Have we met?” Walter asked softly.

The moment remained.

Walter closed his eyes. Nothing gold can stay.

When he opened them again, Walter looked at the empty bench.

“Were you waiting for someone?” a passerby asked.

Walter noticed only one untouched piece of bread remained between them before looking up. A pigeon hopped onto the bench beside him, nudged the untouched bread once, then wandered away.

“I think so.”