1A Day
By Kenna
Her eyes opened slowly to see the shafts of light pouring through the slats in her blinds. The beams illuminated the white blinds from the inside out and turned them a deep gold.
"I'll tell you how the sun rose," she murmured, her voice rusty with sleep. Next to her, the gargantuan yellow tabby growled his response. She turned to look at Bob, sleep making her eyes tight. "You only know the answer because I read it aloud every night. Don't gloat and pretend to be something you're not, you dumb cat," she rasped quasi-firmly, then gave in and nuzzled his fat head. His response was to heft his bulk off his spot on the bed and sashay out the door. She knew he was heading for the kitchen and smiled. Why is every animal I've ever owned a pile of blubber? she mused.
Groaning, thinking she was old for her twenty-three years, she set her feet on the floor and scanned for her slippers. They rested next to her bookcase, on the other side of the room. "It's too far of a trek this early in the morning," she stated glumly. "It's really a shame," she pouted as she headed barefoot down the hall and into the kitchen, "I really love those slippers."
A frown twisting her face, she opened the cabinet adjacent to the sink and took down a can of Chunky Food for Chunky Cats cat food. "Ooh, Bob, it's your favorite! 'See-food!'" she joked, knowing Bob would eat any food along with its container if she let him. He mewled a retort and began stuffing his face.
After feeding the cat, she stepped into the bathroom and started the shower. Sighing, she stepped beneath the spray and let it hit her full in the face. She'd made it a rule to take a shower no less than thirty minutes long. Growing up the middle child in a family of twelve instilled many rules of that nature.
Wrapping the towel about her thin body, she stepped out of the tub and turned to look at herself in the mirror. "I'll tell you how the sun rose," she whispered, waiting for the answer, but none came. She touched her alabaster cheek dotted with freckles, and then ran a finger along the skin to her right mud-puddle-brown eye. She twirled a long rope of mahogany hair around her index finger. She was not pretty, had never been considered so, but she wasn't hideous. Plain Jane. Incomplete. One half of something whole, something she didn't understand.
Turning away from her reflection, she pulled the brush through her hair and went about her morning rituals.
In the bedroom she opened the door to the walk-in closet and turned on the overhead light. Her clothes exactly mirrored who she thought she was: plain, muted, overlooked. She chose a gray fleece sweater and a pair of rumpled blue jeans. She never bothered to fold her laundry; she never even hung up her clothes after she washed them. A tower of T-shirts, sweaters, and jeans were in a precarious stack like the Leaning Tower of Pisa against the wall right next to the door. She instantly thought of her mother. "You are so messy! How can you find anything in this chaos?"
"It's orderly chaos, Mama." She wondered just how closely her closet mirrored that of her life. She glanced at the tower again. "And when I run out of clothes on hangers, I'll hang everything back up and start all over again."
Feeling disappointed with the thought of her mother, she strode back down the hall to the kitchen. Bob had finished his breakfast and was now performing a complex move of lifting a fat-clad leg behind his head to lick his butt. "Yeah, that's a taste I'd want in my mouth right after I ate too," she laughed and poked him in the back to get his attention. "I'm going to the market. Don't invite too many of your ladies over while I'm gone." Bob growled at having his bath interrupted and promptly turned his back to relocate himself.
"Why do I have a cat who never wants to be near me?" she asked herself, shaking her head.
She rose and moved back into the entryway of her apartment, winding the scarf like a noose around her neck and throwing on the pea coat.
"I'll be back later!" she yelled behind her to Bob, and left.
Outside she stopped on her stoop and inhaled deep the smell of morning freshness. "I'll tell you how the sun rose," she said as she exhaled, her eyes still closed. Then she moved down the stairs and began her journey to the market a block away.
She loved being near the market district. It probably had something to do with loving fine, fresh food. The walkway outside the stores was sparse this early in the morning and she walked with a careless gait that no one noticed. She stopped next to a window to peep at the stock. Several rows of ripe oranges peered back at her, making her cock her head to one side. "Which little yellow boys and girls were climbing all the while," she spoke under her breath, a smile playing across her lips. She walked into the store and bought half a dozen oranges.
After an hour the sidewalk became crowded and she was almost finished. All that was left was cat food for Bob. She walked on until she reached the pet store. There was a menagerie of birds inside. She hated birds, not because they smelled, squawked constantly, or overran the household, but because her little brother had had a bird, and he'd taught it to torment her relentlessly. Damn birds, she thought. Better yet, Damn brothers.
Just as she stretched out her hand to reach for the cans, it collided with another. She looked up at the man she'd bumped into and saw a luminance in his eyes she'd seen in no other. Light from the inside out. His eyes were brown, the skin around them tanned from outdoor work, and faint lines fanned at the corners, enhancing the effect of his radiance, as if the lines were the rays that formed from the glow in his eyes.
"I'll tell you how the sun rose," she whispered, barely able to hear herself.
He smiled shyly and looked down at her.
She never heard his answer but found it deep within the recesses of his eyes and knew it was the response she'd been waiting a lifetime for.
"A ribbon at a time."
A Day
Emily Dickinson
I'll tell you how the sun rose,
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.