Early Mornings

Winter comes,
the first snow unleashes itself onto the ground,
and when I wake up early every morning,
the world feels dreamy,
like an old movie,
a haze of black and white,
blocking everything else out
when I'm so tired I can barely feel anything
and when stars still blink knowingly at me in the indigo sky.
My breath swirls up far above me,
Christmas carols ring through the air –
it's still a bit early for those, but somehow perfect.
I'll be thirteen in sixty-two days.
Where did the time go?
I curl my frozen fingers inside the sleeves of my jacket and wonder.
Days feel like nothing now,
and months don't mean what they once did.
Sometimes I wonder
if I'm running out of time
if I'm getting closer or farther away from what I want.
I scream into the stars,
and they smile at me placidly,
keeping their secrets locked tight
within their flaming exterior,
laughing at me from the heavens
as I agonize over the little things,
try to shape myself into someone I'll never be.
Sometimes all I long for
are those cool, silent mornings
a hazy dream and yet realer than anything else
where the sky is starting to change but still clings to the night
where I drift between awake and asleep as I get ready for school
where my voice is novel even to me
where everything is quiet,
just for once.
I will fill with light and color when everything else does
but while my room remains blanketed in delicious darkness,
I'll let it stay like that, if only for a few minutes,
which somehow feel like forever
compared to everything else.
(These are the only moments when
the world slows down.)