Sunrise

I'm not really sure what to write.

I don't think it was the colors, the pale peach smudge against all the blue and gray of dawn, the way the smudge brightened and infused the clouds with amber, rose and cinnamon while the blues and grays edged into purples of innumerable hues. Those colors have all been caught and discussed and captured. There are names for them. Naming them can't be the same as seeing them.

No, the magic in a sunrise is in the unfolding of it; the gradual way that things change. At first, I couldn't even tell where the sun was rising. Then the smudge, and the infusion. The sense of anticipation was slow but building; somewhere above the horizon, beyond the clouds, the sun was moving. There was a small, deep tangerine crescent glowing just above the water, then minutes of nothing.

Finally, a strangely regular gap in the cloud itself lit up with fire—a hole, then a slit, then a slash and then two slashes, widening, growing together until the first orange arc rose above the cloud. It moved so quickly! The anticipation wound out to its end, the sun's arc growing until it was a disk sitting on the cloud, reflected rippling on the lake. Then it hung there, as if it weren't going to move again. I knew it was continuing upward, but for a moment I couldn't believe it. The moment was a second, then two, then 10 and I held my breath, convinced that today the laws of physics were circumspect, that the sun was exhausted and would stop or, worse, sink back down.

Then it moved behind another cloud above it. I breathed again, and realized that I was, and had been, staring directly at the sun. I didn't care. I was cold. I turned around, took off my gloves and lit a cigarette. I walked home.

There don't seem to be any diners around here. There are cafes that open at 8:00 a.m., but no diners open at seven. I wanted very much to go to a diner, windows fogged with the scents of breakfasts cooked and consumed by the clanking, rustling, sighing life inside. I wanted to sit at the counter, smoke a cigarette, drink coffee and order eggs from a waitress in a starched, pin-striped uniform. Someone with henna-ed curls caught up in a hair-net. Someone with crow's feet and arched eyebrows. Someone who, casually, might call me "Hon" or "Shug." I wanted to mop up egg yolk with an English muffin, tuck a generous tip under my dirty plate, slide sideways off the bolted-down stool while I smiled, and waved, and said "Thank you."