you wake up to the death knell of summer - a distinctive, plaintive cry. it comes complete with a touch of dying light, a scent of burning leaves and, of course, a nasty hangover. mere weeks ago you were drinking wine in an unknown girl's backyard, sun on your face, brat in your hand and nowhere to be but here, now. but now you wake up and stumble around the city like a zombie, blinking at your summer friends dumbly as you try to process their bodies with extra layers, longer hair. you wake up to an already fleeting autumn and an inevitable decade of winter. and everything falls on you at once...
you wake up stone-cold broke, the product of a small but obnoxious raise in your energy bills, a bevy of un-consolidated student loans, and a newly developed cigarette addiction. time slips by, and not in that easy, lazy summer way. nothing has changed per se: same jobs, same classes, same schedule, same hours in the day, but now it's like that reoccuring nightmare where something is chasing you in a dark alley and your legs move in slow motion. every day is spent playing catch-up to the things you couldn't get done yesterday and so nothing seems to get done.
you wake up heavier - your skin, your body, your tongue, your brain - dry and cracked and slow. the chill that creeps into your bones takes squatters defacto ownership, an unwelcome guest that will push your levels of sanity just to, but not over the breaking point - never quite allowing you to adapt. cubicle farms swallow you whole yet still don't allow any privacy. the hens pick and pick and pick until just the clicking of their shoes past your office sets off a panic attack. pavlov would be proud.
you wake up more alone. the bed seems bigger. and the phone stops ringing. the questions no longer race through your head before the onset of sleep - instead they churn and then sit like some industrial vat of grey taffy. even the things that came easy to you - your friendships - sag under the weight of something you never should have said. you feel stupid and childish and ashamed. you seriously start to think that you really only do more harm than good.
opportunities fall by the wayside. you bypass interesting people because rejection, in any form, seems more than you can handle. even when he leaves you a veiled invitation you pocket his number, this one deemed too clever, too bright for you.
you wake up scared and yet, you would prefer to have those that have left to scream your trangressions than face the silence they leave behind.
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