[Monday, bloody Monday]
by YBLalat

Yesterday sure was different. It was a rather surprisingly chilly morning yesterday, so to say, as the wind was as strong as ever and with it; the wind carried the most dry and merciless flocks of water vapor. The sun was awake when I reached for my washed-out towel. It was spitting and vomiting its weakest yet piercing ray at the faces of weary garbage truck drivers and sleepy newspaper vendors. Far away lights from the vanishing horizon crept through the minute cracks of my bedroom’s wooden window. It shooed away the sandman as if the crack of dawn was the time the shifts changed between him and the devil. Specks of darkness and loneliness crawled away frustrated with the presence of the interstellar fire ball’s glittering bliss. How poignant it was. The two warmed me and listened to me during the cold and the solitude through and through. I felt sad for them, for having to depart so early in the morning. But as usual, everything around me has its own reasons to be and schedules to adhere and nobody wants to get dirty, intervening with Mother Nature’s periodical cycle especially. At least not in this miserable life.

Anyway, I remember it like no other day. Odd. Every part of it was so glaringly different that I had to frequently check with myself for what I was to do the day after, what day it was and what tasks did I do the day before. Repetition regularly swallowed the insignificants and blinded the backdrop that are so important yet forgotten. Conformity always hindered the deviants and isolated the unique that are so refreshing yet eccentric. But not yesterday. Nervous like a gunboat in a sea of fear, baffled by the escalating tolerance of confusion and lost in a labyrinth of familiarity were what that ran and leaped and squatted deep down inside of me. I knew there was something peculiar about that day but I just couldn’t absorb the hints and digest the signposts around me. I couldn’t make any sense out of them all and was caught so very close, staring at the reflection of ignorance and insensitivity.

"F**k! F**king asshole! Goddammit! Argh!"

It was 11:30 in the morning, Monday morning actually. I just skipped three lectures in a row and the next coming Monday is a midterm Monday. Just three weeks more before this torturous semester ends, just three weeks more before the joyous summer air grazes my thin earlobes and here I was; dragging every pathetic bits of what was left of me to the bathroom. That was the first time ever I took my morning shower with the lights off. Enough was enough. I did not need to be humiliated by myself when I look into the mirror.