the hour before god wakes

There’s a holiness in the moments of twilight waking.
Before coffee, before screens, before language.
No coherence and only ritual.
A devotion of water most simplistic.
But monsters still linger.
Somehow, this all turned into worship.

It started with a walk to the kitchen. A sleepy, slow-crawling, padding stoop of a walk in a long white shirt and slippers, little else. Cold air despite the heat on, so much glass in the house it felt like ice when the world outside turned silver.

Black-and-white checkered tile between the filtered tap and my outstretched hand. With the heat, everything is dry—even when you own enough body oil to ice-skate on your own skin.

If the contortions were possible.

Nothing was bending this morning. Liquid thoughts, grasping, icy-fingered.

The kind of black-outside Tuesday start, up-before-the-sun-rises shuffle, tired but wide awake and impossible to get back to sleep. A never-ending scroll of to-do lists and notes I’d forget running behind my eyelids like the opening credits to The Matrix. Or is it closing? The kind of morning you can’t recall facts of cinema. Not yet. Not until espresso golden warmth melts on your tongue.

But before that—

Water.

It’s built into women, this devotion to hydration. Everyone wants us wet and liquid and pliable, but I won’t fight the protocol man-town on this one. Water is God-sent and I finally reached the altar of my sink.

There was the problem of realizing I needed a cup. Glass, preferably a mason jar. I like to see what I drink, taste, and touch. But the cupboard was on the far side and the water was here—beneath my midnight red nails—if I just scratched the faucet up one notch.

Use your hands.

Why not? Who would see me in the dark?

I leaned over, icy rivulets running demurely from the drinking tap, cupped my palms. Let the shock of glassy tundra trace the lines there, drip along the sides of my fingertips, curling under and caressing the backs of my hands.

I dipped my head, lips pressed to the pool. A full-body chill spider-walked down my spine. Shoulder blades stiffened, nipples tightened painfully into sharp points. The luteal phase is marked by aches, but some pain insists on invitation.

My breasts swelled with soreness—not the kind I hate.

Sometimes you can feel the shape of liquid as it slides down your throat, slips between ribs, settles into the stomach. This was that kind of swallow: a serpent of ice, nourishing and punishing. My hips arched; I pressed my pubic bone to the biting counter.

Windows everywhere, darkness beyond.
A forest of imagined witnesses.
Monsters that loved me.
An ache between my thighs.

One stepped through the glass to kneel behind me, to lift my shirt, to round his hands over the curve of my ass and tilt it higher. Better access without a view. No sunrise yet. When it came, this would end.

A sound left my lips.
I bent further, lapping at the stream as it met my palms, face almost in the tap.
Chilly rivers running over my nose as his lips pressed to my hole.
Then his tongue—strangely cold, vampire-esque.
I drank greedily; my ribs met the counter; my feet slid wider.

I moaned into my own wet hands. His fingers held me open. When my knees weakened, his face kept my balance.

A muffled sound—close to choking—hit my ears just as my night-morning shattered on his tongue. My hips found rhythm; release burned through the cold. The only warmth I’d felt since I’d slipped and dragged and crawled out of bed, all there, for him to taste.

I bowed my head.
Hair soaked, water still murmuring down the drain.
My fingers grazed porcelain; his, wet too—hot on my thighs.
He tugged my shirt down and rose from his knees, squeezing my hips as if to keep me intact.

Too late, but at least I was hydrated.

Enough to make a mess of the floor and if he’d asked—promised to clean it—I might’ve obeyed.

But he said nothing. And that was all I wanted.

No caffeine.
No light.
No words.