Alarm clocks blaring—our sightless hands search the nightstand and windowsill trying to dismiss the inevitable arrival of morning. Still despite our success of stopping the noises, sunlight casually makes its way through our blinds, lighting our four walls. We drag ourselves from our disheveled bed like zombies most days, only to be fully awoken by the beads of water that commit suicide dawn after dawn against our tired and fragile bodies.   

By the time we’ve secured the doors to our home, our late rising has caught up to us. Yet, we proceed with our day, in hopes that something exhilarating will happen. Something new will set fire to our souls and give us good reason to live with great vim and vigor.  

This is what we do day after day. Yet, rarely does anything ever change. We drive towards our 9 to 5’s, wait amidst other flustered lives, staring at taillights and listening to the ramblings of the morning news, sounds of angry horns and anxious sirens.  Aimlessly, we exist. We wear our blinders . . . the only fleeting image in our view remains whatever lackluster routine to which we have attached ourselves.  

By the day’s wind down you are home again. Blinds to the outside now night sky shut, and there’s only news on the tube blaring like those morning alarms. Your mobile device is gleaming. Every entry of the passcode—a futile attempt to bring life back into your socially awkward existence. As the batteries begin to die and the pillows 

start claiming their dozing victims, we think nothing of time we wasted living vicariously through screens and endless traffic jams.   

By morning we will have nothing to show for yesterday’s passing—just outdated messages and notifications that lead to soon to be forgotten social interactions.  And not once during our livelihood do we stop and thank the insignificant drops of H20 which made our dead rising more palatable. Those beads who fell to their depreciation, so we could rise and produce nothing more than mobile junk and more memory to be cleared. 

© 2024 All Rights Reserved, O’Dellshae TruVarsha Wiles Robinson El Bey writing as Egypt English. Enjoyed this piece? Check out my latest book: “My Mother Said Write” (2023).


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