Getting up at six is hard to do.

But not for this.

Never for this.

The sunrise over the sea is worth it.

Ten minute wall from the hotel to the beach.

My hair is a tangled puff of seaweed.

My eyes sting and tear up from sheer exhaustion.

My clothes teek of sweat, gasoline, salt-and-vinegar chips.

| wore them the night before.

| stagger on.

I'm not here to be pretty.

The sunrise is.

| drag my feet down cobblestone, my cheap sandals make that scraping sound.

The only sound.

| echo in a dead world.

Quiet streets like these remind me of what it will be like when humanity is gone someday.
Whether we kill ourselves off or abandon earth to colonize other worlds is not important.
The sunrise and the sea will still be here.

I'm less than a blink, blessed enough to witness this great cosmic cycle, an eternal birth and an eternal death
caught on loop like a broken record.

Here it is.

A blinking dot, leaking, spilling its golden oil into the restless pool before me.

Fveryone else watches from the sand, those cowards.

Only | stray out to meet these ancient waves.

| tilt and swirl with the early tide, | don’t resist the lapping trickle staining the edges of my denim shorts.
| don't care.

| cannot tell the water how to move,

nature how to be,

and | will not dare disturb this endless rhythm.

| linger in the surf longer than | should.

It shudders and clings to me.

Firm but gentle, a maternal embrace.

My arms lift from my sides and wait in the air, a halting gesture, a humble conductor at the crescendo of a grand
symphony, to welcome the mercy of the sunrise and the sea.

| can only watch.

The world can only play.