The night turned blue under the creeping sun. Everything was in a cold dark wash of blue and black. It was too early for sunlight but too late for street lights. The bright Queenslanders and brickstone apartments lay sleepily in the street. Palms and birch trees swayed gently, almost glowing against the deep shadows lying around them. The streets rolled through the hills with very little traffic. Only the footsteps and light conversation of weary school children and fellow loners doted the roads and terraces. The glow of city lights lay just around the hills by the Brisbane River giving the appearance of a second dim sunrise.

This morning was like most, a sliver of time between day and night where I was both conscious and dreaming as I walked through the winding maze of streets. It was the time in which I could wonder and fantasize before the chaos of the day that lay ahead of me. One morning I could be spacing out with Janis Joplin's "Summertime," the next listening to the silence of daily life from the slow distant din of metropolis play and the voices of the local wildlife. Most mornings, however, I would just walk, clear my head and maybe ponder random events. Sometimes, I'd just let my imagination run wild with intriguing ideas of lunar libraries and far off monarchs determining the fate of nations.

As the colors of the world slowly awakened and morphed from gray to vibrant, the row houses and small Queenslander homes gave way to bakeries, restaurants, cafes, and stores of all types. The smell of hot coffee, newly cut flowers, and fresh bread ran in the soft morning breath. The sensation of it all filtered out the reek of hemp, booze, and reckless abandon of the night before.

As I approached my home, empty and small, a sense of order and calmness washed over me. The door creaked open, the only sound made in the whole structure. As I entered, the air smelled of incense. The shadows of the night had come to rest inside the dark house. I collapsed onto the couch, resting within the comfort of the shadows. My mind began to drift. Before sleep took me, my last thoughts were that of the past few hours: the type of carefree leisure only seen in movies, a celebration of youthful independence turning into adulthood.

But all of that was now behind me as I joined the shadows in their rest.

Kauri Tevera is an Australian immigrant who has lived in America for seventeen years.