“The Morning Sun” by Elizabeth Kolias
Illustration by A&L Journal Advisor Mitali Khanna Sharma.
There is something different about the morning sun. It’s like a batch of cookies straight out of the oven, a sheet warm from the drier, a whiff of cinnamon in October. Its emergence is somehow magical, like the unveiling of an eerily familiar afterlife after the death of night, like feeling deja vu for a moment I can’t quite pinpoint. It seems to shine brighter even than I remembered it shining yesterday or the day before or the day before.
It fills my soul with an ancient spirit, dripping into my starved body like honey into water. It reawakens my mind as its wavelengths crash against me. It basks in the silent moment before the tide of day takes over.
Amber and gold and violet and coral and daffodil yellow and chestnut bronze flood my peripheral. It is like the sun itself, too, has awoken from a rejuvenating night of sleep and is now stretching its arm wide, releasing the endorphins locked tight within its joints. Its gentle yawn sways the trees lazily, and it lays in bed for a while, not quite ready to start the day.
Its morning glow seems to melt me, too, in place. It intoxicates me with a soothing high, as time seems to stand still for a moment. For a moment, I wish time truly could stop, and I could let the sun heal me fully before embarking on my day. I wish I could breathe in the sun and never have to exhale it back out. I wish it could wrap me in its arms and transport me to an ethereal utopia where I could stay and watch my life pass from afar.
But alas, the sun and I both must move on at some point. As energy slowly leaks out of me while the day passes, the sun becomes stale, its muscles aching from overuse. It begins to lose more and more battles to the clouds that fight to overtake it, and soon the wind blows its warmth away like a candle going out. I rise and fall with the sun.
Yet the sun is more resilient than I ever could be. After losing to the night over a trillion times, it always rises, rarely battered, usually pristine, innocently fiery.
The sun has seen so much more than I have—it has seen civilizations rise and fall, it has seen a time before humans, it has seen a time before Earth. What it would be like to look at the world through the eyes of the sun!
But one day the sun will grow, and it will become dilute, and the warm ruby glow it once held will turn into a burnt dusty sienna. It will cremate the Earth in its dull flame, and then it, too will be gone.
But right now, I will live here for this moment, this moment of warmth and glow and renewal. Part of its beauty is that it won’t last forever, so I will grasp a bit of it whenever I can.
Elizabeth Kolias is a sophomore currently studying Psychology. She enjoys expressing herself creatively through poetry, short-form prose, and digital art. In the future, she hopes to continue to use the arts to promote positive change.
