What happens when the sun sets?

Under the evening sky, I ask my mother:

“What happens when the sun sets? Where does it go?

What does it feel, and why can’t it stay?”

She smiles at me (a flower crown clutched gently in her hands).

“The sun sets,

because it needs to go home.

It must return to its daughter; it must tend to its broken souls.”

For with the setting sun, lost souls return home;

and when the sun rises, those lost souls rise as well,

safe within its warmth.”

I do not know (I am too young)

what it means to be a lost soul.

I do not ask (I know too well);

that my mother smiles at the distant sky, the bright golden sun

because there is someone she is waiting to welcome home.

Decades pass (I am no longer young),

and I stand before a decorated tomb.

There is still so little that I know (what I do know, she has taught me).

I lay a flower crown gently at her grave.

I feel the warmth of a setting sun;

and I know,

when it passes the horizon,

that I can welcome her home.

Under the night sky, I ask my mother:

“What happens when the sun sets? Where does she go?

What does she feel, and --

Why can’t she stay?”

(An answer I already know,

An answer I can’t stand to hear.

Another night fades into day;

and this conversation, we will have again.

Every time the sun sets,

until I am truly old,

until I, too, go home with the sun.)