Nine Lives

Yellow

Does death ever die?

The hooded creature, reaping translucency with a sprinkle of fear and despair...does he ever rest? I think not, and his constant presence in my life, like a shadow cast over my skin, certainly never sleeps. 

If death stays awake another day, I will be dead...and  I will no longer have commitments to fulfil; the connections I've made will be severed; and my favourite colour will no longer be yellow.

Early sunrise is yellow, and the rising ball of fire to the east awakens the world from witching hour. The moon and the sun always reminded me of soulmates - their coexistence in the universe meaning they could never live beside one another, yet were unable to survive without each other. The tragedy of love.

But who am I to awaken anything remotely romantic? I was quite happily content with my own company on this haunted morning, my last ever sunrise, and the sublimities of the waking world being the only adoration I needed. This morning, the sun was late coming up - the early October air brought a low, floating fog to the damp surface, alluding cotton candy growing from the weeds in the overgrown bushes of the estate. The sky was a translucent brown, the groggy mix of early black and late orange painting a picture of chocolate swirls on the horizon. Mixed with the amber leaves, the readying rainfall eroded their crisp; fresh, heavenly tears crying down upon the earth, weeping to the lack of witness to this twilight hour.

6.48am - the hour of dusk to dawn. All around me, the universe watched. I felt safe under its scrutiny, alert to its beauty. The atmosphere was cold, but my tender breath kept me warm.

I set off into the early morning dessert, racing the sunrise as my joints began to spark and the blood started to pump. My legs carried me away from the past of yesterday, and into the present of today. My fingers were refreshingly numb - the icy fingerprints leaving a layer of frozen cobwebs on anything they touched. My toes were favourably snug - the fresh layer of white paint most likely chipped against the rough fabric of my socks and trainers. With the rising day, I was warming to the opportunities. My locks of curls fell over exposed shoulders, the dirty brown spirals almost hazel in the golden highlight of the sun, the ponytail high upon my head parading down to the top of my spine and tickling the beads of sweat that arched down to the hem of my shirt. I swept back a runaway hair, damp with moisture and sticking to my cheek. I slowed to a halt, lifted my face up to the clouds and let the chocolate pour onto my features, melting into my pours soothingly.

I used to despise the morning. I've always been a night person, the ebony colours, the silence of sleep and the mystery that came with darkness - but the moon was lonely. His only company being the stars, explosions of light unreachable to this lifetime, reminders of what used to be, a history of times before, making the night sky seem all the more dark.

Deep thoughts came at night, ones that are unwelcome to our existence in the similarity of the daylight hours. Imagination, creativity, wonder - they feed on the twilight, offering a fresh perspective on ideas you never knew you possessed. Since being unable to sleep during these lonely hours, I decided to employ the morning as my choice of wonder. The hours of moonlit thoughts and closeted realisations ending with the light of the morning; turning my lack of slumber into a worthwhile sacrifice. I now endured the long hours to witness the world in it's most vulnerable hour - when no one else was around to see it, yet its beauty was unmastered. It was my time to be true, my time to enjoy what the universe had to offer.

Life at the moment wasn't exactly going as I planned at the upper age of teenage hood...I always thought that after  years of studying, I would be enlightened to what path I wanted to take, although it had done the exact opposite. My exams were long in the past, thoughts of university sitting guiltily below my abdomen, pushing my gut away and screaming for me to listen to my head, not my heart.  Back in December, I applied to do English Literature at five of the best schools in the country. They offered creative writing courses, script writing seminars and song-writing societies, but none of them could offer me the one thing I knew I wanted - adventure.