Making the Best of the Birds

Because it’s 2am, and there’s nothing else I can do.

Photo by Jan Meeus on Unsplash

I am not a morning person. Never have been (except for a *very* brief stint near the end of my undergrad), and probably never will be again. I much prefer staying up all night and sleeping late into the morning. If I have my way, my sleep schedule would be 2am to 10am, every day. There has always been something magical for me about the dead of night, when it’s quiet and cold and I can indulge in the wistful melancholy of temporary loneliness.

As lovingly as I feel about the dead of night, I have equally passionate feelings of distaste for most of the things about mornings. The sun being up, the noise of people and cars, the fact that morning signifies another grinding commute for me, and frequent unpleasant run-ins with my roommate as we vie for bathroom space in our minuscule flat. But the downright worst thing about mornings is the birds. The chirping. I have a positively Hitchcockian relationship with it.

“Damn birds and their shitty songs,” I think every morning. Nevertheless, they persist. Those things are more persistent than Elizabeth Warren.

Last night I was up, haunting the bottom bunk of my sister’s room with the slider cracked open to give me some sweet reprieve from the godforsaken valley heat. And I thought I must be…