The Witching Hour

3am.
I know why they call it the Witching Hour.
It’s because when you're up at that hour,
You feel like you’re cursed.
Getting up out of bed
Is more like falling down onto rock
And as your eyes open to even greater darkness,
They’re like little wounds slit into your skin:
Bleeding in the cold staleness
Of an air that hasn’t seen the sun for nine hours,
And still won’t see it for three more.
It’s like a scale model purgatory built into the morning.
That’s what happens when you’re getting broken by the crack of dawn.

Two years have passed,
And I still call 3am the witching hour,
But now, I think, it’s for a different reason.
It’s not so much because it curses you,
But because it enchants you.
Shadows no longer bleed out;
No, you drink in their sweetness,
And that cold staleness of the sun’s absence
Is not an empty void
But a hypnotic beam.
Some might even say it’s shining.
And what once felt like falling onto rock,
Is now a cornerstone that builds you up.
In fact, you’re impatient for the gonging toll
Of the alarm to go off,
So you can immerse yourself in the quiet stillness
Of a day that has yet to be corrupted by sound and sight.
That’s what happens when you’ve been broken by the crack of dawn.