MUTED
I awake in near darkness. Birdsong filters through blackout curtains and the more persistent streams of light follow suit. My roommate's cat purrs in the next room every time she exhales, paws curling out under the closed hallway door. The neighbor's dog hasn't started barking, but I can hear their kids outside piling into the car. Their laughs are like windchimes but their windchimes stay silent. Traffic crescendos, a purr in its own right—but no horns pierce it yet. Someone's either getting dressed or rolling back over upstairs. I roll back over as well and drift away.
The windchimes howl like a gutted wolf and a pissed driver screams their horn straight into my ear and the cat yowls how badly she needs out and the dog needs her out too so it can have something to bark at and the birds only tweet tritones, as if she'd ever catch them—I scrape away the dew from my eyes and everything squeals into focus all at once. Shit, shit, shit, I'm probably late for work or class so I scramble some clothes together and step into the shower before remembering I have to do that with my clothes off, so I brush my teeth and find new dry clothes as fast as I can. The tranquility of the morning suffocates in the rush of the morning—where the hell is my phone? I starting looking around for it and see the cat yawn before curling back up. The birds go diatonic again. As soon as the world starts to roll back over I spot it.
The windchimes quiet down again. I reach for the phone, and as I grab it it jolts to life with the sound of electronic chimes. In turn, my watch in the other corner of the room starts its cuckoo cuckoo beep and the clock in the other other corner beats like a car alarm. 8:00 A.M.—right on time. Panic gives way to peace and I let them ring over each other for a minute. Then I make my rounds—click, click, click. I crawl back into bed fully clothed and roll back over with the world, muted for another 9 minutes.