Sunrise Stories.

I could hear the dawn prayer calling resonating against the vacant town, all voices hidden underneath sheaths of dreams and soundless sleeps. However, I wake rather diligently, tapping into consciousness, my first sensation the coldness within my skin, numbing my feet completely. And it being mid December, I find it quite dark to call it a morning and I’m skeptical whether to leave those comfortable layers of sheets above me to carry on with that they called a day.

I turn around in my place, and your face is facing the other side and I cannot see your closed eyes and morning hair, all tousled and messy, so I carefully touch your feet with mine, and they’re soft and cold like Antarctic ice. I smile, remembering us joking that we terribly failed in reaching the standards of having both of us to keep ourselves warm, and we had believed our closeness would cure the chill out of our bodies but it seemingly didn’t help.

I eventually get up, drawing the blinds to find daybreak greeting me with wintery chromatic smiles coloured yellow and blue. The sky is nothing but that, so I smile back and head to our room, sit on the bed and attempt to wake you up which you respond to quite gracefully.

I plant a kiss on your forehead, wishing you all the joy life could bring on a day like today. I know it’s not possible, but we believe it is. We have witnessed true joy before, even on days when life was so rough that we had to sleep those early evenings away, not to think— to disconnect and run away.

But they lead us here and now, so that’s alright. Isn’t that enrapturing enough?

You need to get up to head to work earlier than usual and when you do, I commence ironing your button down to make it extra warm after your shower. Trying to get you to wear it before it catches a cold, I find you in the kitchen, preparing packed food for both of us, exactly the way I like it, and you plant a peck on my cheek and the roses in my lungs grow against the frozen icicles surrounding them. It hurts, but it smells like heaven.

I quickly return to the room and watch the daybreak become something of the past, but there is nothing but the present on my mind. There is nothing but content, mixed with a little bit of fear from the extravagant comfort I always grew attached to, and having it so attainable leaves me really worried that it won’t last. But I take a deep breath as I brush my hair, and smile to the mirror, watching a reflection of me I used to despise become one I have learned to befriend and watch evolve, heal and thrive. There are lapses, but I overcome them with a patient and a happiness that goes beyond the comfort— because happiness is one of the most uncomfortable feelings I’m experiencing, it being a state I was never accustomed to, a fickle fragment of my imagination.

But now it’s real. Now it’s temporary and fleeting, but it’s there for a few moments to cherish and I need not more than that to wake.

I need not more than that to live.