It’s 7:00 AM and I’ve been awake since 4:55. If the birds were up then, I never heard them through the black that oozed beneath the gray window blinds. Sleep and I are having issues again. She turned her back to me the past couple of weeks and finally booted me from the sack this morning. If you can call the lingering darkness of five to five morning.
I pull the cord down to open the blinds and see the flocked canvas of grass out back. Or what passes for grass among the yellowed weeds, spiny moss and tawny pine needles, composed in the half-glow of dawn’s pastel palette. A squirrel flies his autumn-fluffed tail in a chain of low-gravity leaps, scouring the scene for acorns the oak has dropped in exchange for holding onto its baseball mitt leaves for another month.
And I realize the scene framed by my bedroom window will be soon enough wiped away, baptized by the too-soon-for-comfort whitewash of winter, smooth and cool as those sheets must be by now.
I close the blinds for one more try, offering sleep this squirrel-gray bouquet of words in the twilight dark of early morning, my flag of surrender and supplication for just one hour in her embrace, perhaps to dream of floating through pastel pastorals, amid falling leaves, the wind whipping from north to west, gentle on my cheek. Gentle.
Two minutes later, I’m out back, living the dream.
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