Sudden noise shatters the looming silence of what was previously night.
It’s still dark, deep blue, glowing sky light makes shapes of objects around me.
Sounds are fuzzy,
old glaucous clock radio sound funneling forcefully through my sleep-deafened ears.
The clock’s face,
a green-yellow blinding glow screams at me,
“6:24”
The changing hours and dark seasons
have made it too dark for this hour.
The warm bed covers me, hushing away the music and glaring light.
In a heavy sloom, I listen to time signatures and melodies,
but not the words; I’ve fallen into a world where
everyone’s soft-spoken and conversations are nonexistent.
There’s just relaxed breathing and silent feedback
from a clock that changes the station by itself.
It makes me wonder if there’s a ghost inside
that wants me to listen to foreign languages and classical music,
but it helps me wake up as I turn off, turn on, turn off, once more turn on
the dusty blue clock and now jagged, raw music comes out
instead of the smooth, grainy white of string instruments.
The commercials roll in.
Words I don’t try to comprehend; they are black and white.
I don’t give them my attention.
By the time I start thinking it would be best I got up,
the music comes back and feeds me with an unnoticed sense of applied color,
that’s been shoved to the back of my mind since I was born.
Now, the clock, more friendly, like a mother waking her child,
says softly to me,
“7:08”
and I roll out from under the covers before the bed tells me
I’m too weak to escape its inviting, poisonous grasp.