Before Seven

The city is quieter at six than it is at two in the morning. At two there are still people coming home, still a taxi somewhere with its engine running at a light, still a bar closing or a late shift ending. At six there is almost no one — the people who will be up soon are still in their last hour of sleep, and the people who were out have been home for hours, and the hour belongs to the handful of us who are awake for no particular reason.

I am at the window with a cup of something that has gone lukewarm, watching the light do the opposite of what it does at four in the afternoon. The afternoon light is flat and honest; the morning light is cautious, arriving by degrees, not yet sure of itself. The buildings across the way are still in their own private dark, one window lit in a kitchen somewhere, one in a bathroom where someone is getting ready for a shift they did not ask for. Everyone else is still dreaming or still turning toward the wall.

There is a particular kind of attention that becomes available at this hour, and it is not the same as the late-night kind. Late at night I am winding down; the attention is soft, willing to forgive a wandering thought, patient with itself. In the early morning the attention is sharper than it has any right to be — I have not slept, and yet I notice things I would not notice at noon. The shadow of a pipe on the building across. The way the streetlight is still on, losing its argument with the sky. A bird that does not know what hour it is.

The reason I am awake is not interesting. The reason anyone is awake at six is rarely interesting — insomnia, a habit, a cup of tea that landed wrong, a thought that would not let go of you. What matters is being here for the hour, which is a kind of small privilege that is also a kind of small cost. The city will wake up in an hour or two and begin asking things of everyone in it. For now it is asking nothing, and I am one of the few who noticed.

She is asleep, probably. The way her schedule runs, she will not be up for hours — noon, maybe later, depending on how the night went. I like thinking of her in the last stretch of sleep, the part where the dreams have finished their work and the body is just resting. I am here at the window; she is wherever she is, hours behind me in the day. The gap is not a problem. I keep the window; she keeps her rest; we will meet in the middle somewhere, when the city has woken up and is no longer mine.

For now it is still mine. The light is arriving. The kettle has been on twice and will be on again. Somewhere a bus is starting its route, and somewhere else someone is unlocking a door they unlock every morning at this hour, and none of them know I am watching. The early morning does not care whether anyone is watching it. That is what makes it worth watching.