In the Early Morning
Wednesday - 04.21.20 - 4:51PM
Sometimes I wake up too early and I sit in the living room in the dark, listening to the hum of the fridge or the air passing through the vents - to these sounds I never really notice in my fully waking life, that only exist when everything else is calm and quiet.
I wrap myself in a fuzzy blue blanket my parents gave to me for Christmas one year. I distinctly remember a photo I took with all my presents that night. I’m wearing a new pajama set and red suspenders that my sister got me, and the blue blanket is draped over my head and shoulders like a shawl. My eyes are closed and I have a stupid smile on my face and I look happy in a simple way.
So I sit on the couch, wrapped in that same blue blanket, and I try to be happy in a simple way again. The view from my balcony is a nice one: you can see all the billboards of Dundas Square flashing outside, offering enough light into the apartment that I don’t feel lonely sitting there in the dark. Beyond them, you can see skyscrapers and condos towering to the north.
I can see everything through the huge living room windows from where I sit on the couch and I wonder how many people are awake, bustling in the early morning dark.
In a different time, I would imagine a few people here and there, hurrying on mostly empty sidewalks, rubbing sleep from their eyes and trying to get to an early shift at work. I would imagine handfuls of people stopping into a Tim Hortons, yawning and looking forward to that first morning coffee and a warm bite to eat. I would imagine a stranger on a Greyhound bus leaving town, head leaning on the window, unsure of what the future holds wherever they are going, something sad but also romantic about watching the sleeping city roll on by.
It’s hard to imagine these things now. Now I imagine empty streets, a kind of ghost town, with anyone outside in hiding. Life interrupted, life sent home. I imagine everyone is still fast asleep, comfy in their beds - that I am the only person awake in the whole entire city, even though I know this can’t be true.
After a while, I leave the blanket on the couch and try to go back to sleep. In a few hours, I will be awake again, too busy for the luxury of pausing to look outside. I’ll barely even notice the snow, so strange in late April, falling out of time.
