The Early Morning

Does anything bad ever happen in the early morning?

Birds crowd on droopy telephone wires and sing towards your window replacing the radio from your alarm clock. Go ahead, yell. The birds are too happy to stop squawking. That black cable is their water cooler.

Drug dealers enter the paint-peeled squares as the worms burrow into the mud.

Bed monsters rub that weird shit out of their eyes, and sleeping beauties snore until their wives kiss them on the cheek.

Some wake up on the right side of the bed. Others, lie there and will continue to do so, until found days later.

Some wake up with wings, because last night after the party, they flipped from their backs, crawled over the tile floor, inched up to their blanket cocoons, and waited to become better. Much like it makes what was cold into warm, morning makes disgrace into opportunity.

The magical elves hide in the bushes, only leaving their morning dew as evidence of their presence. The stars take five to refuel their tanks, and end their opening act. Sunrise is soon. Turn off all cellphones so as not to disturb the audience.

It’s time for the eagers to feel the wooden floor with their toes and catch the cold water from the shower head. A shaving razor clinks against the side of a sink to lose the whiskers and cream. Cast off high heel shoes, cover the shag carpet, as a woman hops on one leg to slip on another likely rejection.

House doors are closed by night-shift workers and opened by diploma recipients. Joggers break their mothers’ backs and mommies reach into microwaves for the warm bottles. Two hands carry a bike out of a backyard and a car cranks from slumber.

Tires massage the highway’s back and vehicles honk good morning to one another. Middle fingers are shoved out of windows while peace signs are shown right back.

No, nothing bad happens in the morning.

Because too much is already going on.

Desire and conquest

You met her with stone eyes, even though your insecurities tried to melt them into wax. She looked down, smiled, and the rest went to rest. Now, with her legs, she envelopes you like a pearl in an oyster. Her soft cheek hugging your hard shoulder and it's woman and man. In the dark, her eyes are holes that you've learned to recognize. You know her by the sound of her breathing, by the weight of her hand on your happy trail, and by how her hair tickles your nose, but doesn't make you want to sneeze. You try to imprint on your brain how the pressure from her feels on your stomach, chest, and knees so you can call her to mind, physically, when you're alone. But you're disappointing yourself, because now you'll never be alone. Comfortable loneliness is not having any Body around and no thought of one either, and with her, that will never be actual . But right now, you're brazen. You're selfish. And don't know how and don't want to be satisfied. So, you explore her back with knuckles and callous fingers, nearly crying to God to turn the dead tips of them pink so you could feel her winding road. You realize how much of her thigh fits in your palm and how far up your hand can go until her breathing halts. Which inch makes her sigh, which centimeter makes her stretch out, and which itch she dies for you to get. As you skate on her skin up her neck, she reels back and her hair hits your face making a splash. Almost arrogantly, you move up further into her field of a black mane, and make a fist to pull it back. She looks at you and spaces out completely gone. Completely gone. Because she's found the man to pull her reins.

...by That Solid Old Man