Camp Scene at Night

I wake with a start. I have just landed in this bed after a dream of falling. My eyes are still closed, slightly sticky. I will myself to sleep again, but it has ebbed away from me. I open an eye and look for my alarm clock. I am presented with a foreign wall and sleeping bodies. This isn't my room. I look around, trying to understand where it is I have woken up. The muscles in my eyes feel like pistons slathered with molasses. The room stutters just a little. A dam breaks, and memories flow back to me of the night before. A headache kicks in, the exclamation mark to my epiphany.

I stare at the ceiling. a landscape of snowy white peaks of stucco. The ridges and valleys all random, yet unfamiliar. You would think you wouldn't remember the pattern of your own ceiling, and yet here I am, expecting a dip here, a point there, and they are all missing.

The first rays of sunlight creep in from behind the fabric curtains. Still a navy blue, as the sun has not yet decided to wake completely either. The clock on the TV across from me reads 6:42. It is still too dark to make out other objects in the room. Soft breathing and the lumpen shapes beside me are the only indications that other things are living in here.

I watch the covers slowly undulating. The sheets are a deep blue: I imagine it is the waves of the ocean. I am watching from a boat on a calm early morning. The waves lap against the side of the hull, not crashing but whimpering, exhaling as they retreat from the ship again.

A seagull breaks the silence. I look up to see it's shadow on the curtain. It rustles rudely there, trying to find a more comfortable position. It's disturbance has awoken me to the world that is waking up outside. I can hear the cars passing below. The leaves shaking a maraca beat as joggers beat against the pavement. Birds call to each other in the distance, letting each other know the morning has arrived.

Finally, I am awake.