Sometimes I wonder if anyone who really loves the quiet of morning has ever stayed awake through the night. Or if we just have different quiets, different mornings, different nights. Sometimes I wonder if everyone is really living in an alternative universe and we just occasionally bump into each other.
We’d be kinder to each other if that were the case, I think.
We’d say “Hello! How is your universe?”
And we’d listen– really listen– because human beings grow four times more curious than we ever could tall.
If we were having coffee, I’d ask how your universe is, and I’d listen. I am feeling more curious than anything else lately. Yesterday morning– bright and brash like all my universe’s mornings– I would have said I was more filled with questions than blood cells, but then I spoke to a dozen children through emails and phone calls and voice chats all day, and I realized they had more questions in a single hand than I did in a galaxy.
If you tattoo yourself in the same color as your skin, would you be able to see it when you slap yourself? If you could charge yourself instead of sleep, would you, even if it made your breath smell bad? Is it still poetry if no one likes it? If we live inside forever, how long before we start to look different?
Frankly, I’m still a bit worn out, but in the happy way that happens around still-growing humans. If we were having coffee, I’d probably be pretty quiet.
Quiet as some people’s mornings.
I’d sip my non-caffeinated tea, and listen to my start of day. How the ocean shakes her tail of yesterday and the drip and fog splashes in tiny droplets all over the city with a soft swish sound. How the delivery drivers shout their restock items to the restaurants, trying to outhowl the wind. The palm rustle. The early work traffic that honks at the drivers and swerve around fallen palm. The song of the birds who remember when this city was built around them. They call it child and they chirp that it is time to get up.
The children will be already up, no matter what morning-time it is when I refill your cup. I’d serve you your drink of choice, no worries. My universe has some caffeine laws in place, but I know that yours probably does not.
Without conventional school hours anymore, the children zoom past in scooters and bikes. They stop at my gnome home and shout in surprise, I didn’t think we were going to get a gnome Christmas this year.
They almost didn’t. I had a few rolls of ribbon and a universe still running on sleep as the primary charge.
The shouting wakes me up, every day, but I let the birds preen throughout the day as though they did the heavy lifting. The delivery drivers have nothing to carry so big as a sleeping city, after all.
I’d ask you if your morning is quiet even when you share it with me.
If We Were Having Coffee weekly prompt hosted by EclecticAli. See or join the participating posts here: https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/9b19ac173bad46549a9991056d535562
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