In the morning

By Tiago Correira

Translated by Rita Magalhães

In the morning, I feel more like myself. In the morning, I am closer to a Higher Self.

In the morning, I am more hopeful, as the daily pressures have not yet settled in.

Before the scourges of everyday life rip me apart into a thousand fragments, before the soothing slumber and morning after make me forget that I do not know who I am.

In the morning, “I am a transparent eye”, as the bucolic would say. One with nature, with dawn, but distinctively me. The opening of the eyes for the first time brings me peace, before I remember who I am, before remembering I do not know who I am, before I search for something that will legitimize my existence throughout the day.

In the morning, I am in communion with the divine. I am in intimate copulation with the Creation, with the beginning of things, and at peace with its end. When I look out the window, I watch the beginning of time, the dust that today concatenates me. I am resolute.

Before breaking fast, before drinking the first espresso, before smoking the cigarette, before hearing the first "good morning", I exist, the darkness has not settled in. Before being a collage of others, before otherness, I am my least dishonest self.

Before unfolding the newspaper and learning about the landslide in Manila, about the hunger queue in banlieue or about the line of tents in Morais Soares. In the morning, before my rising confines me to the generalised mediocrity.

Before memory returns me to the callousness of the day. In the morning, I smell magenta, turquoise and all the similar shades that the afternoon gloom robs.

In the morning, before being made of plastic, I am made of light. The threshold of the meat does not drown me. I have not yet justified why I am good; I did not need to.

In the morning, before looking in the mirror and not seeing an echo, before my reflection becomes an amalgam of splinters - I am me.

Before remembering that everything that surrounds me is fake, including me. Every day I am reborn from the vigil, and I see myself, albeit briefly.

See you tomorrow.