early mornings

Nobody tells you that early mornings have their own kind of silence. Not the empty silence of a dead afternoon, but a full one, as if the world is holding its breath before it starts talking.

I'm rarely there by choice. The alarm goes off and my first thought is betrayal. How dare it? I was in the middle of a perfectly good dream, and now I'm being dragged into a darkness that still smells like night. I bargain, of course. Five more minutes. Then five more after that. Sleep and I are in a toxic relationship, and I'm the one who keeps coming back.

But on the days I actually get up, something shifts. The house is still. The street is blue and unhurried.

Somewhere a lone bird starts up, then a second, like the world is slowly tuning its instruments. The air is cold enough to wake my face, and the tea tastes better

than it has any right to at this hour.

And here's the strange part: my mind feels clean. No notifications yet, no messages, no one needing anything. Just me and a few unclaimed hours that haven't been spoiled by the day. Whatever I do in that time feels like stolen treasure. One page read, one paragraph written, and I'm already ahead of the person I was yesterday.

I know the people who swear by it, the ones who say "I'm just a morning person" with unbearable cheerfulness. I'm not them. I'm slow and grumpy, and my brain needs a full ten minutes to remember what language it speaks. Mornings aren't my natural habitat. I'm a visitor, wearing a jacket and squinting.

Still, I keep returning to them, because early mornings offer something nothing else does: a fresh page before anyone else has written on it. The day hasn't disappointed me yet. I haven't failed at anything. The to-do list is long, but it's still just a list, not a verdict.

There's also a gentleness in watching the light arrive. First a thin grey line, then a wash of gold, then suddenly the whole sky is awake and doesn't need me to narrate it. I stand there thinking, this happens every single day, and I miss it almost every time.

So maybe that's the real reason I try. Not for productivity, not for discipline, but to witness the beginning of something ordinary and quietly miraculous.

Tomorrow, the alarm will ring and I'll hate it again. But I'll get up anyway. The sky is worth it.