My sleep disintegrates into a sore neck and a dark room. I lift my head from my desk with a groggy moan.  The screen saver of my laptop stares at me— accusatory and bright.  A notebook filled with indecipherable trains of thought and decorated with drool sits on the side.  The details come to me like Polaroids on a string, haunted by meaning through their coexistence.

The sight of the bluing sky between window blinds clarifies that my all-nighter didn’t quite make it.  The work lays unfinished for another day.  My phone buzzes on a table across the room.  Answer it.

Instead, I force my now-cold cup of coffee down my throat, too tired and caffeine-addicted to skip, and open the window over my desk.  The winter-spring air of the morning haunts the stillness of my room like a specter.  The blinds stir, the hair on my head and arms shifts, the pages turn.  

There’s no more hopeful shift between seasons as winter and spring.  Spring to summer is a slow squeeze.  Summer to autumn is a relief.  Autumn to winter is a death.   

My phone buzzes on a table across the room.  Answer it.  I don’t.

I can already tell that I’m going to skip breakfast by the way that my body recoils from the word.  I want to fill myself up on sunshine and bird song, rainwater and honey.  My body doesn’t feel like it’s sitting in the chair, aching and exhausted.  I feel like a memory, or a dream, or a ghost.  I am gone.

There’s a breath of time where this is all I am: a room filled with fresh air and a sunrise.  But this time when my phone buzzes on a table across the room, I answer it.