The Hour Before

June thirtieth.

It's 5:47 a.m. and I know that because I looked at the clock on the microwave, not because I set an alarm for it. Gerald's vine is grazing the kitchen shelf the way it has been all month, I noticed it last July, then again in November, and now it's just part of what the shelf looks like. The cord is on the windowsill. The arrangement is where it always is. The mug is in my hands and I haven't drunk from it yet.

Since the Carol box arc finished in May I keep noticing that I don't have anywhere to be pointing my attention first thing in the morning. Yoga is Wednesday. Climbing is Tuesday. I don't have a reason to be up at 5:47 and I'm up at 5:47 anyway. I've been writing two sentences about it in the drafts folder for most of June and not turning them into anything, which feels accurate. Some mornings are not posts. Some mornings are just the particular quality of the light before the city gets loud, cool and a little blue through that one window, catching the edge of the letterpress card and the rim of the mug and not much else.

the windowsill at 5-something. Gerald's vine. The cord. The arrangement, unchanged.

I sat at the kitchen table this morning with one knee up and looked at the window for a while. That's the whole report. The windowsill was doing its thing. Gerald was doing his thing. The hour before the routine is apparently its own thing, and I only just noticed it after all these years of having a routine to be before.

Tuesday or Wednesday. Before yoga. Before anything.

I'm not going to do anything about it. I just wanted to write it down before it became the kind of thing I only notice when it stops.