Afterglow

Is this what “afterglow” means? The question came to me as I looked up at the sky twenty minutes or so after sunset. There is a faint orange colour on the horizon where the sun was. The colour grows paler away from the hills; the sky is now mostly blue, the top of the sky darkening while the horizon is slightly white, painted with lines of light and lightdark grey clouds; two dark clouds appear to the right of the horizon, surrounded by the red of the afterglow.I knew the word “afterglow,” but I didn’t know what it meant until this evening: the colours that come after a moment. Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a glow remaining where a light has disappeared”, or “a pleasant effect or feeling that lingers after something is done, experienced, or achieved”.I think I felt both this evening: the warm colours cast by the sun even after it had receded behind the hills brought me joy, as it always does – to see more colours, to see the changes in colours, to think about how the colours…