7 AM

At two in the morning, who has defenses up? At four in the morning, who is counting the hours? At six in the morning, there are birds outside, singing, and the sun is beginning to come up. At six-fifty-one in the morning...my fingers are on the keyboard, and my eyes are still open, though I feel as thought I've been awake a hundred thousand years already, and the day has only just begun.

The birds. I can hear them, and they sing their challenges. Battlefields and mating season... Summer has been upon us for some time, but only now do I hear the calls of new life. I've been sleeping far too long, lost in hibernation, left over from winter. I slept right through spring, because I stayed up late in the year. Mid-December I finally took my rest, and now -

A car goes by outside, on the street, just fast enough to disrupt the twittering birds outside. It's not still. The breezes ruffle my shades, and they clack like the pincers of some hideous sea creature. My room is drenched in red and orange, with shadows cutting across the floor, laughing.

The gentle humming of my laptop lulls me. My fingers on the keyboard click steadily, except for the long pauses when I'm thinking, or breathing. I've always liked to breathe. It became a hobby of mine, somewhere around sixth grade. Before then, I can't quite seem to recall.

Pain caresses my relaxing body. It feels strange, and nice, to have something so familiar that I can despise, so early in the morning, before the world had properly woken up. I will wake up soon. I can feel it. My world is sleeping as of yet, and waiting for that perfect moment to be dragged back into awareness.

Three minutes before the world rises and greets the dawn with choice swear words. It'll be a Saturday, but that means little to the office-goers, and who can blame them? If they listened to the same music I did, their ears would be broken as well. But all is well that began half-heartedly on the thirteenth of a month that no longer exists. It's in the lyrics of this instrumental, if you listen close enough. I can hear them, singing in silence.

This is the ride of a lifetime, sitting...no lying on my bed, on my stomach, elbow digging deep into the mattress so I can type. I'm here, and we're more alive than ever, even if there's only one minute until the end of a moment, and then we'll be awake again. Why must we wake? When it's something so simple, you'd think it would be easy to stay sleeping with pillows tossed onto the floor, and these giant blankets stuffed with dead geese and their feathers just folded. But things are never -

It's seven.

Good morning.