Morning Ritual
Sometime early every morning
I’ll wake up having to piss
Or to drink from the sink, which is a short hallway away.
The trip is easily navigable
Mostly through repetition
Often with a passage of light
beaming in from a neighbor’s porch
Or sometimes from moonlight
The dots of the hardwood stare out to me
like the dark eyes of a buried monster
or a cockroach, in standstill at the vibrations of my footsteps
Dim anticipations of what watches me from unexpected places
Those with cheap hardwood and cicadas outside will know
exactly what I’m talking about
The bathroom door is already open,
and silently closed behind me
In the darkness I risk pissing on the seat
Or drinking without company
So I turn on the light
and confront my reflection
Often, he’s parts pink and yellow under the lamp light
purple under the eyelids, my eyes blotched with pale blue
Far brighter and richly colored
than myself during the day
I piss, or drink, like an animal
as natural as stems grow
and wind whistles
I flick off the light
And I stumble back
Passing knots in the hardwood
And crumple into the folds of my sheets
returning to sleep.
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