Fiction: Five A.M.

Five A.M. by Edward Hopper, 1937

Fiction: Five A.M.
Always, at five a.m., he would wake, disoriented again by the early hour. He would glance out the windows and begin again, the familiar tasks to get acquainted with his surrounding.
    This morning, the cold have spread through the hills, over the houses and covered the ocean. The water is a frozen passage where if he wants, he could step outside and take a walk and never return.
    Sitting by the mahogany kitchen table with his hands wrapped around a hot mug of milk, he ponders why he have stayed. Often, the answer is simple: habit.
    A long time ago, he came here alone and to be alone but he had thought he would grow out of it but in time, he grew into it.
    There are places he could go. Places with new surroundings and new people. Create new habits, change his waking schedules. But the times he have stepped away from the lighthouse, he had panicked. If he left, would he still have time to return?
    But the lighthouse is his home and at times, his prison. For months, the cold weather would keep people away. Then he would try to anticipate when they will come. When people do come, he would wonder when they will leave.
    Today, as he watches the frozen landscape below, he wonders perhaps, he would go to New Zealand. It is cold there too but the view is different. He would lose a day but gain a new perspective.
    But as sunlight falls on the table surface where his milk had gotten cold, he is reminded again, anywhere he went, he would crave company but the one company he wants to see the most will never come.

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