The Morning After an Argument With Someone Close

There are mornings when last night arrives before your eyes are even open. What was said, what your faces looked like — it comes back out of order.

Seven o'clock. The next room is quiet, and you find yourself counting the sounds beyond the door. Water running, a cup set down, and then the length of the silence that follows.

You're thirsty, but going to the kitchen feels awkward. You haven't decided yet what your face should do if you meet. So you fold and unfold the edge of the blanket instead.

And so, still lying there, you write the dialogue in your head. If I say this, they'll say that, and then I'll say — nothing has happened yet, and already it feels like you've had the argument one more time.

But the first feeling that surfaces in the morning is usually leftover heat from the night before. Less a new thought than warmth that hasn't finished cooling, still sitting in the body.

Words spoken at that temperature tend to come out harder than the ones you meant. And then last night happens again.

That's why this morning is arranged around not rushing toward peace. The three minutes of not moving after you open your eyes come first — not because you need time to decide, but because you need time to cool.

Writing down what you want to say comes next. Once the words are out somewhere they don't have to be sent, they usually soften on their own. Reading them back, you sometimes find that half of them weren't meant for the other person at all.

The reason washing your face and a glass of water sit after that is simple. When a body stiff from the night loosens a little, the voice loosens with it.

Last is deciding, in advance, that this doesn't have to be resolved today. A one-day deadline makes the heart hurry, and hurried words are usually clumsy. It's fine to let today be a day for saying good morning and nothing more.

What a morning can do may not be reconciliation, but opening the day in a state where reconciliation is possible. Even that much changes the evening's conversation a little.

The window is open, the water is drunk, and nothing has been said yet. That's enough for this morning to have passed.