6:14am

You are awake before the alarm.

The room is the specific grey that only exists for about twelve minutes before the light changes. You know you should get up. You know the day starts better when you get up before the alarm.

You lie still.

There is something about this particular ceiling that you have been looking at for — you count — four minutes now. Maybe five. The crack in the plaster near the light fitting has been there since before you moved in. You noticed it on the first day and have not noticed it since, and now you are noticing it again.

The alarm will go off in eight minutes.

Your jaw is already tight. You don't remember clenching it. The tightening must have happened somewhere between sleeping and now, in the part of waking that happens before you know you are awake. As though the day arrived in your body before it arrived in your mind and your body had already made some kind of assessment.

The ceiling is the same as it always is.

Eight minutes.