1.
The sun rose.
2.
Slowly, stumbling, hesitant, the sun clambered up from behind the horizon.
3.
Morning light spilled across the horizon like a blood stain.
4.
Implacably, without even a shred of remorse, the sun rose.
5.
It was still dark when the birds started up. They didn’t even have the decency to wait until the slightest pink smear could be seen. I lay there, as slowly the brightness of the world was dialed back up, blacks shifting to grays, my bedroom briefly a bad set in a flickering movie from the silent era. If only the birds were willing to wait until the invention of sound.
6.
The sun seemed to rise with a sense of eagerness that bordered on impropriety.
7.
The sun’s rise seemed to reflect its age, a creeping, creaking ascent that was little more than an exhausted crawl. Although at 4.6 billion years old, I suppose you can hardly blame it.
8.
The sun was like my toddler, arriving in my bedroom far too early, far too eager, shoving its fingers into everything, not giving a damn if I was ready for it or not.
9.
The sun lifted its head cautiously, almost nervous to be seen peering over the horizon, spilling its light onto the night’s aftermath.
10.
In an instant every glass surface in the city became a mirror, and so a single sunrise became a million refractory sun rises, a mirror ball blooming of light that shone everywhere, and could not be escaped.
11.
“Screw it,” the sun thought. “Up and at ‘em.”
12.
“Let there be light,” I said, and there was. Although we had to wait until 6:00 am for it like everyone else.
13.
A brilliant, blazing, belligerent ball of blistering brightness arrived, burning eyeballs without abating.
14.
It’s hard to think of anything cheesier than a sunrise. A butterfly tattoo perhaps? Maybe that “children are the future” song? But it’s hard to talk about a sunrise without summoning a sense of almost cloying hopefulness, a perkiness that clings to the throat and makes it hard to swallow. But then, almost against your will—because really, who wants to be up before the crack of dawn?—you’ll catch one, and it’ll catch you, and you’ll be stuck there, being forced to acknowledge that nature really can be a magnificent motherfucker sometimes.
15.
The daylight slipped in insidiously, infiltrating the space by infinitesimal degrees, only finally acknowledged when we were forced to concede that we could now see the consequences of our actions illuminated before us.
16.
The upper edge of the sun’s disk became coincident with the true, unobstructed horizon.
17.
Buoyed aloft by birdsong, the sun burst upon the scene.
18.
Light spilled across the landscape, as if a can of luminescence had been knocked over by a careless god.
19.
Finally, though, the night was over, the defeat of darkness announced by a single bird shrilling out the arrival of sunlight upon the scene.
20.
As reluctant as the people who lay below, the day cracked open its single, brilliant eye, and gazed upon the world spread out before it.
21.
Mornings here were for aftermaths. The sun’s first rays illuminated kids slipping out of basements—glitter and the stink of sweat still clinging to them—as well as those who had not made it so far, and who were now sleeping it off on park benches, and in the cars they were not fit to drive. Shafts of sunlight lit up the faces of lovers raising bleary heads from pillows and contemplating how they would explain this indiscretion to their spouses. They picked out freshly sprawled graffiti, spilled drinks, and splattered blood. They revealed each of the night’s secrets one by one.
22.
The geometric zenith distance of the center of the Sun reached 90.8333 degrees, geometrically 50 arcminutes below a horizontal plane.
23.
Inch by inch, the sun swept night away from the world.
24.
Like some kind of deranged slasher flick antagonist, the sun stabbed light into the day with wild abandon.
25.
For once, the day had the decency to dawn slowly, light seeping in little by little, coaxing me awake with a gentle hand rather than a violent shake.
26.
Deep in the heartland, the first cockerel crowed, and as the old magic dictated, the sun was once more summoned from its slumber.
27.
The sun wished it could look away, but as dawn inevitably came, it was once more forced to stare down upon a waking world.
28.
There’s always a moment when I think it’s not going to happen, when the dark will linger forever, that I have witnessed my last midday, my last person wearing sunglasses, my last person shielding their eyes. Every night I sit there and I worry. But then inevitably, the sun comes and burns my fears away.
29.
“Oh look,” I said. “That big yellow bastard is back.”