Her

After she awoke she sat for a while in bed. The sun made bits of shadow dance on the wall. She was sleeping in a yellow room, with two small square windows. It had been her boyfriend’s sister’s room until she left for college, and now she was inhabiting it, a stranger’s bed, a stranger’s room. Her toes were cold. The sheets were almost impossibly stiff and tucked tightly beneath the mattress, so that she could not wrap the covers around her as she liked. Little drafts of cold occasionally slipped beneath the sheets with her and she shivered.

                The visit was going well. Her glasses were on the bureau next to her bed. She only put them on when she was by herself because she was certain they made her look librarian like and unpretty. The family breakfasts in this house were large and well attended events. In some ways, they unnerved her. Breakfasts at her family home were rare and haphazard. Often, she and her sister would eat in the living room, reading a book, or watching a show, while their parents finished up. The meal was never particularly formal.

                She found that she liked to ease into her mornings, slowly and surely. She enjoyed an hour or two of quiet in the morning. Something about the first voice of another person, if it came to early in the morning, was like a piece of glass being shattered on the floor. She knew it was silly and that everyone in the family meant well when they said, “Good morning, and how are you?” which she cheerfully answered, the color coming into her cheeks as she smiled brightly back at them, all the while wishing that she was back in bed or wandering some old country road, listening to the birds or the sound of a distant mower.