Blue Hour Ends

The evening still has its colour. That pink is the last of it — the twenty minutes after the sun has gone but before the sky admits it, when everything is warm and nothing is bright.

Then the night arrives, and it does not arrive as darkness. It arrives as weather. A ridge of deep blue cloud coming in off the edge of the sky, thick enough to feel, moving faster than the light can hold. It is already past the corner of the canvas. Whatever is behind it, you will not see tonight.

The moon is out early, the way it sometimes is — pale, patient, waiting to be handed the sky. It has been there the whole time. You only notice it once the blue starts to win.

The cloud is built up in heavy relief, laid in with a palette knife before any colour went on, so it stands off the canvas and throws its own shadow. The pink behind it is flat and calm by design. One is happening to the other.

Hang it somewhere the light changes — a bedside, a landing, a corner that goes quiet in the evening. 25 x 25 cm, acrylic on stretched canvas, finished in clear varnish. One of one. It already exists, it was not made to order, and there is no second copy.