At 5 AM and it’s me and the birds. This is how I like it: when the house is asleep. Outside, the slow rumble of a sanitation truck. A lone scooter screams down the block. Sometimes a helicopter hovers. A different sort of writer might pause to name the local birds (mourning doves, blue jays), might open an ornithology app, but technology has no place here, and research could derail the whole hour. Birds, okay? Sweet tweets, soft moans, the distant caw of a shore bird piloting toward the sea, spirited and hopeful, daylight already breaking through. In winter, the tenor of their song is tinged with desperation, a pleading in the dark, accompanied by the radiator’s heavy breath, but other than these temporal shifts, this is what I’ve come to expect regardless of the season, the sounds a comfort as an early morning writer for god knows how long.Article continues after advertisement
Tired? Sure, but I’m not sleeping much these days anyway, as I’m at the age where the body’s gone rogue, jolting awake at 3 AM, skin on fire, soaking the sheets with sweat. The body is a Gremlin, but this is not a menopause essay. If anything, exhaustion is integral. Lidded eyes, shoulders slumped over the kettle, I’m up but barely, teetering along the line between wakefulness and sleep, that tender liminal space where the magic happens. Who am I kidding? There’s no magic. Writing can be a slog. But it’s either now or nowhere, in this pocket of time or no pocket, my dog trailing me downstairs, clacking on the hardwood, before settling into his post by the window to watch the world and wait for his turn.
