There must be a breach in the seal of the windows because the smell of the storm wakes me. It’s 5.30AM and now that I am awake, my stomach is filling with shifting clouds, the thing that happens when I have too much to think about.

The weather front is still moving through quickly, the sky is a low white mottled blanket as I walk to my office. It is strangely warm so the pigeons are not huddled away, they are sitting on the tops of the buildings, studding the roofline with their stolid forms, fast moving clouds behind them.

I did not mean to be condescending in that loud place but I can barely hear, never mind express a complex thought and the noise strips away nuance and I am not good at talking in stand-alone bites. She says she’s lived a lot by age 25 and I say I felt that way too. I wanted to tell her but then I got younger.