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Early Morning
It was early morning. The stars, moon, and sun all seemed to be hiding, uncaring. The night sky was a black canvas, one where if you squinted, you just were able to make out faint colors of purple, spread unevenly throughout the sky, as if the purple was a painter’s mistake, hurriedly covered up with rough strokes of a black paintbrush. Drunk from sleep, I mindlessly turned the light on. The unnaturally orange light chased back the darkness of the bathroom, just enough to make out the faucets from the sink. In the dim fluorescent glow, I pushed the faucet to the right. Icy water rained down, tearing a hole in the silence with shards of ice, clashing with the eerie warmth of the light. I’ve never liked warm water - the warmth took too long to arrive. It was better to be cold than to wait for something that might never come. I brushed my teeth. I changed out of my pajamas. I stubbornly refused to wash my face, to sae su. I hated the way the water touched my face, how it suffocated me, as if drowning in a sea that existed only in my mind. It used to drive my dad crazy, but this time, he said nothing. He silently watched me, too consumed by his thoughts to care. I wondered if this would become the end of my memories. A murky dream, one that mattered so much, until the night was gone.
This piece was an assignment for Language Arts - we had to write a set-piece, a short piece of writing that was experimental, where we practiced a literary device. With this set-piece, I wanted to experiment with the literary device mood. I hope that by describing the sky, light, and water in ways that I’ve tried to do in this piece, I’ve achieved the desired effect of dark and eerie quietness. I like this piece because of the uncanny calmness of it, like the calm before a storm.