Sometimes in the morning, I get up before the sunrise.

When I stumble out of bed, I notice that the uneven attic floor is freezing. I must have forgotten to close the window the previous night.

I reach out in the darkness for my glasses, shove them haphazardly onto the bridge of my nose. There.

The cat is napping peacefully on a tangle of blankets that have fallen to the floor – evidence of restless sleeping and bad dreams. There are droplets of hardened candlewax on the wooden headboard, dregs of herbal tea in the bottom of an old chipped mug, a small heap of half-charred sage leaves in an old ceramic bowl. Teetering stacks of books and paper are scattered all over the table, the floor, the bookshelves. My great-grandmother’s ancient and very ugly vanity is almost completely covered with notes and old pictures, strung with dried flowers and Christmas lights.

From the odd bits of mirror that aren’t covered up with old photographs, a worried looking girl peers out at me. Roundish glasses frame dark circles under grey-green eyes. A mess of brown hair that wants cutting surrounds a plainish face, with early-morning blotchy skin, blue lips, boyish eyebrows and my mother’s nose.

I scoop as much of my hair as possible into a ponytail, and pin the rest of it back with cheap plastic hair combs to keep it out of my face. After a few moments of bleary rummaging and split-second decisions, the rest of me is presumably somewhere in among the oversized sweaters and old jeans.

I need coffee.

I pad barefoot down the stairs and make my way into the kitchen. The radio is quiet. The dishes are put away, the counters are halfway between mom’s cluttered and dad’s sparkling. Dad has already left for work, and left me a mug half full of black coffee by the coffee maker. My mother is still sleeping, my sister is in holed up in her bedroom. There is black market milk in a glass jar in the second fridge.

A few moments later there is a little less milk in the open jar and my coffee is the perfect color, and I’m sitting with my legs crossed on the kitchen chair, and I’m drinking with my eyes closed.

And it’s time to face the day.