1 fragile hour

1. The hour before you are due to be woken by the radio, an alarm, or, if you’re lucky, a kiss on the forehead and a “Wake up, love, I’ve made you some tea”. It is the most delicate hour, the early morning quiet. Your dreams become lucid and you decide that yes, you will steal that cow and its udder so full of milk, because it’s a dream and in dreams you will bear no consequences, not even the imagined ones, because you can say no, drop into the ground, turn into a frog, wake up if you really must. Your closed eyes become dimly aware of the light knocking at the window and reaching around the edge of the curtain, like a warm hand, about to cup your chin and tell you it’s time to rise, put on your boots. It is the hour of the sun. Yet, there is a chill as it emerges, and you pull up the doona, spend the hour invisible in your bed, striving to sleep, to collect each and every moment of rest owed to you from the day before. You breathe heavily, as though snoring. You don’t dare to look at the clock. In this hour, the early morning quiet is coming into day, disappearing. You struggle against your ridiculous half-consciousness and are defeated by lines of urine striking the water at the bottom of the loo. The world is deafening. You get up.