Before Morning Comes
Dawn is still dark, but outside the window it's slowly brightening. The end of a sleepless day and its beginning overlap. Someone is still inside a dream, and I am sitting here. It was a long time. But the word long is enough. The regret over what I couldn't finish, the fear of tomorrow coming, none of it speaks loudly right now. When morning comes, the world will ask a great deal of me again. Before that, for a moment, I'd like to be allowed to catch my breath quietly like this. Like the moisture on the window slowly clearing, maybe I too can set down some weight. While I think this, the stirrings are growing louder. The hour before it can yet be called tomorrow. I pour a cup of coffee and say nothing.
A few sparrows were pecking at the paving stones under the streetlight. In the moment I closed the window because my fingertips ached with cold, the birds had already vanished beyond the wall. Before the dawn air turned colder, was that hour mine alone, I wonder.
Hearing you say your fingertips ached with cold, I imagine the world outside kept flowing at the same pace even after you closed the window. I'm just looking at the empty paving stones left where those birds went over the wall.