end of winter, after summer

The light needs to sit within the darkness to be seen. Inside the cave of one's own body, one must position one's self opposite the flickering candlelight in order to see the circular prisms dancing on the ceiling of the world. The candle burns for several hours but never burns down - it just keeps sending its light onto the dark surfaces around it until the sun comes up. Once the sun comes up, the whole room is flooded with a cold orangey-blue - it's the colour of winter turning into spring.

The city sits nestled inside the nook of a bushy valley - also emerging in the dawn from damp darkness into warm light. The streetlights flicker and eventually fade, just as the candles do. Something primal howls before dawn and then shifts to silence afterwards. The ferns snap crisp in the cool air, creating a knowing frame around the motorway in the distance. Car lights, too, dance up and down the horizon until the morning lifts them out of their fantasy and into the strange new world. The animals sit breathing at the window, shifting their own broken breath onto the panes of glass. They sit high, looking down - they have no illusions about their right to be here.

A heavy, yellowish cloud shifts its way through the murky new light and the whole valley becomes a restless catacomb of Friday energy. Tui flutter between the wooden deck and the changing sky. The morning is a dense shade of dark green and the light spills out behind the perimeters of the clouds, like the sun behind the moon during an eclipse - radiating out from the edges and sending it's bright colour sharply around the darkness in front of it.

My throat opens as I breath in the view. The cavities in my head become peaceful, breath flows through them easily once again. Everything is clear. I return to the sound that sits in my chest, I return to the knowledge that sits at my atlas, I return home. I integrate and re-integrate. I align my vertebrae with the journey its made - it will take some time before they're wholly here.

The morning remains quiet. The cat mimics my gasping and then, my stillness. The world feels beautiful for a moment, as the night carries its energy over into the day. I sit up. I become awake. I take my thoughts and I make them solid. I speak. I listen. I wipe away the salt from my eyes.