a certain slant of light; zoe

There is nothing special about the sunrise, just like how stars are just balls of fire and flowers just the earth’s scar tissue, but she finds herself waking on either side of the line midnight draws. She gets no proper sleep, getting up between the darkest hours of the night and those moments when lights breaks out and spills through the cracks in the sky. The outlines of clouds begin to appear, and she could almost hear the birds sing.

Her gaze is dull and her eyelids heavy. There is nothing special about this at all.

There is, however, the rhythmic procession of movements playing again and again in her head, and she finds that she is every bit a ghost as she should believe. (Ready your stance, adjust your grip.) But it’s not so much of haunting places than it is of haunting herself. (Pace slowly, one foot after another.) She may be sitting on top of her own home’s roof, frozen and still, arms wrapped around her crossed legs and her head against the chimney side, but it’s as if she’s not living at all. (Breathe in easy, more steps.) Only a decoy, while she feels as if she has never left the training room. (And lunge.)

By the time the sky has turned into the meekest shade of gold, she is tethered back to reality, plunging into her body once again as she stretches her limbs upward, fingers interlocked and palms facing out. She yawns from the lack of sleep rather than breaking from a spell of it, and eyes the rising sun on the horizon. She loves the day for the distractions it brings, and altogether hates it for the throbbing vitality that’s too much.

She gets up, hands against the concrete floor and finding the fire escape railings too easily, trailing her fingers against the red-rusted bars and sure footings, stepping on her window ledge and finally inside her room. She glances around like a cat, prowls along with careful eyes, but there sentimentality where it shouldn’t be and nostalgia when there is none. She should’ve been sleeping here, curled within the covers and head buried in the pillows instead of watching the same color splashed into the same canvas, the same film in an endless loop until whatever beauty she has to see in sunsets and sunrise and those little specks of lights are reduced to dust, then swept away by the wind.

The cold water comes out rushing from the faucet, and the sting is only too welcome once she washes her face with it. There is no difference in her reflection, freshly-cleansed or not, when shadows still linger around her eyes it seems they’ve been painted on there forever. Perhaps it has.

She limbers down the staircase and heads to the dining room, the smell of sizzling meat and frying eggs wafting as a smoke and filling the room, only to leave through the open window. The food has been neatly set, with the plates arranged and the flower vase in the middle of the table, the condensation making a pebble path made of water on the surface of the orange juice pitcher. She sits on her usual seat, beside Tiger and facing Artemis, not minding the vacant space on either ends of the table and ignoring the question that’s been answered and left on a pool of bitterness. Where were her parents? Working, always working.

“Good morning.” She says fascinating lies.