Early morning always feels a little enchanted to me.

Not magical in the grand sense—no shooting stars or answered prayers—but enchanted in the way a tidepool is enchanted. Small, overlooked, and full of peculiar treasures if you’re willing to kneel down and look closely.

The world is caught off guard at this hour.

The moon hangs around like a guest who missed the hint that the party is over. The birds seem surprised to find themselves awake. Even the sun arrives slowly, peeking around corners as though it’s trying not to interrupt.

Everything feels softer, but also stranger.

Distances seem longer. Memories sit closer. Thoughts wander into places they would never visit in the middle of the afternoon.

This is the hour when I find myself wondering about impossible things.

Where all the missing socks go.

Whether seagulls have best friends.

If every person has one memory they return to more than any other.

The kinds of questions that daylight usually chases away.

I like the feeling of belonging to such an impractical hour.

An hour that asks nothing of me except that I notice it.

The silver edge of a cloud.

The first bird brave enough to break the silence.

The way the horizon slowly unbuttons itself and lets the morning spill out.

By the time everyone else wakes up, the spell is mostly gone. The day gathers its responsibilities and begins introducing itself.

But for a little while, before the world remembers what it was doing, I get to sit inside the pause.

And it feels like finding a dollar in an old coat pocket.

Unexpected.

Small.

And somehow enough.

8. 2026