before most have awakened wherever I am.

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There's little to do, which means there's little to change, and my thoughts are largely theoretical. As the hours pass, the day moves from theory to practice (in theory); later on to history. 

 

Growing up, I'd stay awake to stave off that conclusion. There wasn't an hour early enough to leave the house and take in a sky every day in short supply, with purples and blues and pinks that would give their all to empty sidewalks and limestone and brick. I'd walk the streets before dawn, imagining a comfortable life with little to do that I did not want to do, and everything that would keep me warm, well-fed, and free to think without end.

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I count myself fortunate that I could grab a stoop and read when my body grew too tired to keep a pace I liked. I count myself fortunate that I could keep music with me as company, off tapes sometimes recorded just hours before. I could rewind a tape and relive a moment that felt sweet when it first landed: some ballet of early traffic in an intersection; the first real sun off a big, broad window. I'd be inspired to move again. I'd picture it all happening again, with sweet lighting and great timing, down to a beat. I'd spend time in replaying time.

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The sun's final rising over the tallest buildings makes everything flat against the weather of the day. Nothing and no one can help becoming what is, ceasing for a time to be what could. Such is the give-and-take of living in a world where, eventually, the streets fill again with people, and life becomes again about reckoning with the facts of existence.

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Some leave home desperate to leave, and others desperate to return. Their days are consumed with thoughts of how to manage to discover, or hold on to, or reclaim who or what it is they truly want, labeling that sensation as home. Where comfort rests. Where safety resides in walls or beds or books or shoulders. Where identity is pure and incontrovertible. They feel a tug of time at the hem of their shirt, and understand that sensation is hard to define yet easy to waste.

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When I walk as the sun rides high, I'm at work, my ears perked to what I've picked to keep me company, even just the change in pressure as the air grows humid or rain rolls out. At sunset I'm walking to wherever I'm to rest—having grown older and infinitely more comfortable with sleep, where I dream often of a life that takes place on that line between night and morning. When I wake up and I walk just before dawn is when I'm home.