Last night I forgot to press the big button on my alarm clock– the one I’ve had since I was sitting my exams at school. It’s obnoxiously big and bright green, with soft edges and a plastic sheen, and I use it because I try not to rely on my phone for such a thing as rising. The romance of this idea, however, is often undermined by the weight of oversleeping more often than I’d like. This happened today and so, in my pajamas, I had to sit on a video call and eat breakfast in front of a pixelated audience.
Usually, this would offset a day, tilt it, make me feel slow and wavered, but because of some thought spared last night (chocolate oats softened in their own milk overnight, some pitted dates and some granola) I was able to laugh instead.
I dusted on (too many) rye bread crumbs, then haphazardly divvied up a banana with the spoon I used to eat it all. The sun was up and liquid at this time of day. I was silhouetted on my screen.
At noon
I would have preferred dill over coriander, with its clean flavour fitting the pace of today, but here, from top to bottom, was rye bread crumb over coriander over lemon-doused cucumber slices, over natural yogurt, over cold lentil dhal, over rye bread. The rye bread was stale, and the fork was blunt, but I fingered the stuff into my mouth at the window while watching two dogs paw at a few crisping leaves in the corner of my neighbour’s courtyard. The dogs moved the leaves around until the leaves turned to dust, and once the leaves vanished, so did the dogs, out of my view. I then sat for a bit more. Then I left.
Dinner was fried egg, cucumber and other things, followed by three cranberry biscuits, and other things.