aperture | d.h

o n e

The sun has only just risen but I am already up. I stand in the shadows, changing, the muted early-morning light crawling in from between my curtains. The glass is cold, frosted over. What will be of the day peeks out in a pale wash of cool blues.

I push my hair back, gathering it loosely behind my head, padding into the bathroom where I splash my face with water and rub the sleep from my skin. I dry off, letting my hair back down, sifting across my shoulders. I dab on some concealer, watching the shadows disappear from beneath my eyes.

My apartment is cold, considering heating is so expensive, so I wrap myself up in a big knit jumper and head out back out to the bedroom. My apartment is only really two rooms - the bathroom, and the bedroom, where a small kitchen is tucked up against one wall. I put the kettle on, and then the bread in the toaster. I lean back against the bench and stare out the window.

The sun has come up further since I' done my hair and makeup, glimpsing parts of my apartment through the foggy glass. It creeps up one side, and then across my feet, cool and hardly sun at all. The kettle pops behind me. I take a mug, pouring some tea.

I eat in silence, at the cheap Ikea table by the window, where an old bunch of congratulatory flowers from my friend, Petra, sits miserably in the centre. I absentmindedly push them around with my fingers, listening to myself eat and the world wake.

I almost forget my poem today - I'm about to stand when I notice the little pink book resting up against the flowers, so I take it, opening a fresh page. I stare at it blankly, balancing the pen in my fingers.

I started writing haikus every morning after my Mum died a few years ago. They said it would help, seeing as I liked writing - and it did, if only a little. It had sort of stuck, I guess.

The day barely wakes

It sleeps a little longer

I wait for the sun.

The dishes clang as I stack them in the sink, promising to do the washing up tonight, and I go over and swap my knit for a suit jacket. It's not warm enough, not in this miserable London winter, so as I'm slipping my shoes on I take the heavy black winter coat from the door and wrap myself up in it, followed by a scarf. My keys jangle as I lock the door, slipping out into the hallway.

Everyone else is still mostly asleep, or preparing themselves for a long day of work. I take the stairs, prompted by some mild concept of health and electricity-wastage, and it's so quiet here, in this newborn morning, that I can hear every step I take.

Outside, it is bitterly cold. It hits me in the face like a wall of ice, and I shrink back, blinking, wrapping myself up further, pulling my scarf up around my nose and holding myself in a hug. My shoes click on the pavement, and I pass people, all hidden and shapeless beneath their coats, coffee steaming from paper cups, gloved hands wrapped around the caffeinated goodness.

I catch the tube, rammed up against various other work-goers, stiff fingers holding onto the hand-hold above my head, gripping as we go back and forth like the movement of the tide with each screeched halt at the next station. I push apologetically through a huddled group of schoolgirls as we arrive at my stop, and I jump off, holding my bag to me as I navigate the crowds and decide to take the stairs again. It'll warm you up, I tell myself, breath coming faster.

I stop and get a coffee from the coffee shop by work, where a man in a beret serving me tells me my scarf is 'absolutely stunning'. I give that nervous laugh, the nervous laugh I reserve for compliments and generally socially awkward situations, and then he passes me my coffee and I'm off.

I'm still not used to the fact that I work here. I think this as I pass through the doors into the throbbing heart of the BBC, my little twenty-two -year-old-hands wrapped around a cappuccino, feeling as if I don't deserve to be here, and I'm still just a nervous journalism student wanting to prove herself to the world and tell beautiful stories. And so I still feel like I don't belong. But here I am, one of the few lucky enough to snag a graduate position.