A letter to a lazy Sunday morning, too mundane to even dare remember
Dear H,
There’s a poem by Savannah Brown, “the universe may stop expanding in five billion years” from her collection sweet-dark. In her words, the poem deals with the unfairness of time and how to appreciate small and wonderful things with the knowledge that one day they will go away. This past month when I have found myself woken up during the hours of ghost silent-ness of the 3 am haunting, I have gone back to this poem time and again.
The warm light from the lampshade dimly lights the room. This is how I have been sleeping recently. This year, I had formed a habit of comfortably falling asleep in the darkness but getting jolted awake after unpleasant dreams seem to require warmth — and so, the lamp stays on.
Usually, if I can’t fall back to sleep, I wake up and turn off the light (the better part of living in a city is that there’s always some light piercing from somewhere — and if you are lucky enough, it will be the moon.) So, I walk the halls of the building, there are no curtains in the windows of the corridors so whatever light cascades through, I take pleasure in them.
And thoughts, so many of them fill the halls of my mind juxtaposition to the calm outside and these are the times, I long for the crying cats outside our building when I had moved in. As I tip-toe up and down the creaking wooden stairs, I tip-toe around my thoughts; careful not to stir and alarm both the ground that I am standing on and my thinking.
Usually, haunting the hallways does the work — it soothes the ghost of the day before, and I can fall back to bed (this time without the light for the wee morning hours brings with it the rays that fall through the curtains).
And when I do wake up in the morning, I make myself tea and head to the roof. I have been questioning, or rather the question plagues me — in the grand scheme of being, where do I fall? Where does the mountain place peaking out of the enveloping clouds; these early morning murmuring of the birds; the earth perhaps, and the universe itself. The existential trepidation of our lives and the things we build around them amounting to nothingness doesn’t go well with the breakfast tea; both too dark and bitter without any sweetness.
And how is one supposed to savor the now on a lazy Sunday morning? Surely not by distracting the self from the impending end and only suffocating the lungs with crisper air of the here and now. I am not great at balancing both; often, I am in a tug of war — one side winning, the other struggling but the ropes haven’t been let loose and the push and pull is always in a continuum.
Usually, the tea will go cold, and I’ll realize it when I will no longer feel the warmth in the clasp of my hand. And like Savannah says, can we please, perhaps, imagine a better continuum.
When morning turns to afternoon, I spoil myself in the warmth of your arms. This too — fragile and fleeting, I push back the knowledge, that the universe may stop expanding and one day this too shall go away. And so, I let my thoughts collapse in the linen sheets, my head on your chest — and I close my eyes shut, like how everything will with time.
Yours,
O.
