By 4 a.m. T was up and gone--away on his photo journey--and I, who thought I would not fall asleep again, fell asleep into a complex dream about a bus journey, a town meeting, and interchanged identities, and I woke up late and groggy and dream-hungover. So here I sit, watching the fire catch in the stove, acquainting myself with the pallid light of morning.

The moon has coaxed away the sea, and the mudflats, specked with boulders, draped with kelp, stretch along the foot of the bluff. Color has been washed away. There is no brilliance. Two Canada geese fly west.

In a little while I'll get dressed and walk up to my friend's house, and we'll have coffee and probably do a zoom exercise class together and then I will feel like a normal awake person. But for now I am liminal, still barely myself, breathing slowly into slow fog. I ask myself, What does bleak mean? and I do not have an explanation.