Lonely moments before dawn

/ Jeff Cann

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Shaken awake with triggers pulled, all my boxed checked. Unprepared for a meeting; running late; walking through work without my shirt. The guests arrive, too little food for everyone. I haven’t failed yet, but I will. You don’t want to read about my dream, you have nightmares of your own. At almost dawn, thirty minutes of sleep left on the clock, my mind races through worst case scenarios. I lose my job, school never restarts, the government fails. We saved too little money to make it through life. One of us dies. Coffee comforts me so I turn on the stove and start a pot. The cats squint under the kitchen light and wonder about food. Soon they’ll spar and hiss and growl and wake Susan up. My only job is to keep the peace. Feed them or throw them outside. Or maybe this time let them fight. The news remains unchanged since I went to bed. People died. Testings lagged. Poisonings spiked. WTF, people are still on cruise ships? My coffee pot exhales a rattly breath. It’s time to wake up.

Photo by Huyen Nguyen on Unsplash

19 thoughts on “Lonely moments before dawn”

  2. Sounds like anxious dreams! Someday – hopefully soon – this terrible cycle of repetition and bad news will ease up, and the dreams too. As for mine, they usually involve snakes or my teeth falling out. But two nights ago I dreamed I was working on an excel program that only had rows and not columns. NIGHTMARE.

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      • Yeah, I’m happy to have conversations and chats, I just didn’t want my focus to become too much about the comments, as it did with my previous, public blogs (which sometimes got me in trouble to be honest.) I have few enough readers though, maybe I’ll think about opening them up.

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  7. Enjoyed the writing! I’m glad I don’t remember most of my dreams but those I do remember vaguely have been what some teacher friends of mine call schoolmares. What the heck. I have been retired for six years, why am I having schoolmares? Hope your vivid dreams calm down.

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  8. Sorry you’re not sleeping soundly. I’m not either. Lack of sleep can affect your whole outlook on the day, I know. You’re not taking melatonin are you? I took that and it caused me to have really vivid dreams. Not pleasant ones, either. Hope you get a good night’s sleep tonight.

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  9. I think everyone is having weird COVID dreams and either waking up early or going to sleep at the wee hours. I’ve been really trying to figure out a new normal for myself because I think this is going to go on for a long time — if not isolation by mandate, isolation by choice. And so much else will change as well. This is Great Depression level change — some of which I think we as a nation needed and some of which is just HARD.

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    • “as a nation needed” This is an interesting perspective that I’ve danced around a bit. It will be interesting to see what we do with this lesson. I find it depressing that political lines are being drawn between health and wealth. I don’t understand why it needs to be either/or. Why can’t people protest lockdowns while wearing masks?

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