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It is too early. I am still picking the night out of my teeth, all bite and little bark. The shower did what it could, but there is not a setting for miracle I could find. The same sad-sack face, dead eyed and haggard in the morning mirror. The same ratio of dumb and crazy, only idling in park.

I recover the morning paper, leaving it unread on the kitchen table. No coffee yet, no reason to be awake so early other than habit and an epic unwinding that still hasn't found bottom yet. I look at the calendar and count the days. Down to my last two cigars, my stupid habits suddenly so precious and so considered, I decline to light up. I run the spell-check and correct my usual suspects. I marvel briefly at how little I have learned, then continue my typing typically. I always have some secret deadline to keep.

I might go back to bed and read for awhile. I might go back to bed and sleep the day away. I might stay up and have that cigar after all. The possibilities are endless. Dawn is strolling towards the horizon as I spread clumsy words across the screen. Outside the moon has already set, witnessed briefly burning a hole in scattered clouds earlier last night. A few more days it will be full and begin the path of the obscure again. I'll say the sort of thing I say about it then. As if I was seeing something and the words would flow. As if this spilling was any more than a misdirection, a trick I play on myself on long nights and barren days. A sleight falling from a sleeve, a face worn just for the mirror, lost to the world of eyes.