February.19



Sun, unencumbered, surges in through every curtain gap. The birds see it long before I think to open my eyes. They are calibrated to sense the first twitch in the fabric of night. Their chorus resonates. This is how the nineteenth day of February begins. I take my mug of cold yesterday’s coffee from the pot and out to sit in the garden chair in which Cat likes to sleep. Tired, thanks to Baby’s unsprung teeth, I close my eyes and raise my face to the sun, and browse along the inside of my eyelids, following warm colours from a golden peach to the deepest heart of red. This expanse of colour can only be the span of my eyelids, but from here it is the size of space. Open my eyes, frown at the stuff-pile waiting to be taken to the tip. It has its own junk appeal, this untidy slice of life. Shut my eyes, escape in the mosaics of glowing cerise.
Later, when the laptop workings are reinstalled with all the reverence of surgery, and the rebooted reincarnation is marvelled at, of course I laugh at myself for fretting at all.

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