Broken Morning

So, it’s morning now. Warm, like the smell of a brewery, and fuggy. I can taste the yellowness of the air and I want to screw my eyes up so tight that I block out all light, all thought. Birds are razor blades in my head. My sheets feel heavy and I can feel the sheen of sweat on my body. My skin feels loose, except for where you have touched me, and there I feel your fingerprints and the hot sharpness of a dormant bruise. I smell of yesterday. I feel like yesterday is still with me. I wish it was tomorrow or the next day. Yesterday and today have already blurred together too much to be of any use.

The sound of the outside world is muffled by a walls and windows. I can hear the ticking of a clock somewhere as it syncopates with my pulse. A car in the distance, spluttering as it starts up. An early morning whine of an aeroplane taking people away from -or back- home. There is a rustling noise somewhere, indistinct but clearly papery and thin. Footsteps drum above my head. The man in the flat above is pissing and I can hear the hard, percussive, foaming noise it makes as the warm torrent hits the water and echoes in the toilet pan. The footsteps bass drum back again. He didn’t flush, or wash his hands. No taps, no rushing roar. He must have gone back to bed. I wait. I breathe. Silence, apart from the birds and ticks and heartbeats. I open my eyes.

Before my eyes adjust to the light I see the world as an animated pointillist picture. Grey-blue dots dance on the wall and ceiling. The early light makes the curtains glow like a horror movie cliché. A breeze makes them billow and sharper thicker slices of citrussy light flash through the gaps and sting my eyes. I cannot return to sleep now. I wouldn’t want to, maybe. It’s not possible anyway. My mind is awake and wants fed.