First light, second cup

There is a window of maybe twenty minutes, between the moment the sky turns from ink to grey and the moment the neighbourhood wakes up, that I have started to guard like a secret.

I used to spend it scrolling. Now I spend it at the kitchen table with the second cup, the one that is not about caffeine anymore, just warmth. The first cup is for waking up. The second one is for noticing things.

This morning it was the frost on the fence, the way it disappeared from the top rail first. Tomorrow it will be something else. That is the whole practice, really: sit down, look out, write one line.