Good Morning

I think I need to start writing in a journal again. I've abstained for so long I think I'm ready.

Woke up to the Sun streaming into my room, reflecting white rays onto the ceiling that radiate into the shape of a fan due to the way the curtains are tied. The world outside my window framed in a sloping triangle of azure blue sky void of clouds, metallic silhouette of distant skyscrapers and a band of blinding white roofs. 

High-pitched laughter of frolicking children in the nearby nursery and the whistling, chirping birds lent an air of sweet innocence befitting the starting of a day.

I reached for my glasses perching precariously atop a stack of books and put them on. I am never truly awake until I put my glasses on. The blurriness of vision, I associate with a dreaming state.

S. had just finished performing solat dhuha. Her slender white hands hidden within the folds of her white telekung, cupped in the offering of a prayer. Head bowed, dark eyes down cast, she wore a doleful expression that subdued her vivacious beauty into an image of purity and piousness.

I sat up, pulled my quilt closer around me and turned on the heater, expectant of the resulting warmth and whirring noise that reminds me of crickets. S. briskly got up and set about folding the prayer mat and telekung. She trotted out of the room and came bursting back in moments later. 

I observed her quietly. S. carefully handled the green vase full of wilted pink lilies on her desk, placing it onto the grey carpeted floors of our bedroom. With languid gentleness she started unwrapping a bouquet of white lilies she received on Monday. Sitting cross-legged, singing a love song as she arranged the yet to bloom stalks. After adjusting the pink ribbon at the neck of the vase she addressed me, her white forehead bearing a single crease, mouth slightly upturned. "But they're wilted aren't they?"

I appraised the bowed light green heads of the lilies, only some have glimpses of the white petals hidden within.

"Maybe they'll look better once they bloomed."

"But then they'll be heavier." She retorted. Mimicking the sound of a sob, she leaned against the foot of my bed, despondent. "I want to wrap them back in a bouquet. At least they'll look pretty lying on my desk." I nodded in approval.

As S. proceeded with her task, she put on a familiar love song on her phone and hummed along to it. I gazed outside the window, squinting. The room is now warmer.