Sunlight fell softly through the shades like snow, slowly accumulating, filling the room with a warm yellow luminescence. The air grew warm and the birds sang, and it was the opportune moment to greet the world. I rose slowly, following the faint call of the birds through the windows, feeling my body lean into the sun’s embrace. I pushed my hair, saturated with the grease and filth of the night, out of my eyes. The birds lit my countenance with song, and the smell of coffee urged me out of the nebulous body of dawn. I ventured downstairs, beginning to recall the consciousness of purpose that differentiated sleep from wake. At the counter sat all of my favourite morning things: a cup of coffee, a bowl of shreddies, a stack of books, and a stubbly, pajama-clad man reading a newspaper. “’Morning” I whispered, attempting to convey all my love for the moment without tainting it’s unremarkable quality. “Hm” the man muttered back, picking up his mug for a sip of his own human elixir. As I sat, a slim grey cat jumped onto my lap, already sharp with the clarity of feline instincts. How cunning he was, how swift. He made me feel slow, nebulous like the morning mist, caught in a daze like the sunbeam following its predetermined path down to earth, or an ant marching along in a boundless line of ants marching for no purpose other than to march. I abandoned my bowl, mug, books, cat, and man because I couldn’t allow myself to remain still any longer. I could feel the blood collecting in my feet, could feel my muscles beginning to atrophe, and my brain congeal and rot in my skull. I needed to stop this, needed to fix it. So I ran upstairs, washed away and left behind the filthy film of the night before, pulled on fresh clothes and shoes and took my leave of the world of man, out to where the air was clean and the grass grew wild, I ran. As the air and the water and the birds are simultaneously free to move, and caged by the necessity of movement, so was I. Finally free to fulfill the deed it was my responsibility to perform, and all of the morning was mine.