Morning Number One

Back in a place with morning rain.  I am looking at a rainbow, and at hibiscus petals leaden and sulking with the wet dawn.

Tropical mornings.  I remember this.  I worshipped this more than any God I have ever been introduced to.
 
   Strange how the city falls off your shoulders.  No room for it with all the new freckles, and it gives up quickly in the light of who it knows you to really be.  All of the things I have been gripping onto are all of the things I do not actually need.

We convince ourselves of so much.  That we need our noise-cancelling headphones.  That our heartbeats don't count if they're not racing.  We buy blackout curtains so the city doesn't get to tell us when to wake up.  All at once reveling in overstimulation, and desperately trying to escape it.

And yet here I sit, awake with the Pacific sun, with my noise-cancelling headphones hung carelessly around my neck.