The morning

I have always loved the morning. Every day that I am able to wake up and see the depth of blue fade and lighten and suddenly illuminate with brightness, like the face of a child, I feel a welling up of gratitude pushing its way up from inside of me. It is as though the same newness, the promise of a new day, a new chance, new hope is contained inside of me. I am the sun.

The same way that the sun bursts forth with luster, veiling the sides of buildings with a gold luminous shimmer, the flowers dotting the ground, the scape of the land, city street or plot of grass with gold luminous, I feel myself reaching out. I feel myself wanting to touch and feel and taste and see and be. Be and be a part of everything.

I stop. I listen to the silence. It always tells me something. It reminds me that once everything was dark and blanked, consumed underneath a thick and heavy cloud of night. I draw in a breath and feel the air, clean, sharp and smooth at the same time, the same way a sip of water feels as it slides down your throat. in the dead heat of summer. I’m stilled by the freshness of such moments.

Yet, there is both beauty and danger in contemplation. Some days I will find myself remembering all the things about my many yesterdays. I think about how I’ll never be there again, who I’ll never be again. I think about the constancy and curse of change, its inevitability and ability to transform you into a person both foreign and strange. I try not to get caught up in losses, tangled in a knot of trying to hold on to all the things that time has taken from me.

When I look in the mirror I don’t always like what I see. I notice the whiteness of my skin and the heaviness that sits underneath my round and wanting blue eyes. I feel sad looking at myself, my purple tinged lips, sunken cheeks. I try to center my breath. I’m tired. I notice my chest rise and fall gently, ever so slightly, almost not at all. I imagine a quiet and meek young boy hoping that he will be able to disappear from a large and crowded room.

I move my fingers to my sternum, pressing cautiously at first, then harder and harder, until I accept the fact that no amount of brute for could ever shatter the cage of complexity the surrounds my heart. Maybe if I stare intensely enough I will be able to see the artifice the lives inside of me. I trace the risen and fleshy incisions the run along the contours of my rib cage and wrap around to my spine.

I know I needed the surgeries. It’s still puzzling when I consider that I had outlived my expiration date. I was given the opportunity of newness, a new life, many more mornings, countless sunrises and sunsets. They fixed me. They gave me more time. I often worry though. If they fixed me, why do I feel so broken? Why do I long, still, for yesterday?

I just want to wake up and see myself the same way I see the morning, with gracious appreciation, with love and awe. I want to be captivated as if I am seeing the melting of all the golds and reds and deep burnt oranges reflecting against the soft whispering lilac blues. I want to see myself every day, the way one sees the world for the very first time.

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