The kettle at 5 a.m.

There's a specific kind of quiet at five in the morning. Not peaceful, exactly. Just empty. The kind of quiet where you can hear the refrigerator think.

I don't wake up early on purpose. I wake up because I've stopped trying to convince myself that more sleep is coming. Somewhere around 4:40 the pretending gets harder than the getting up, and the kettle becomes the easiest decision available.

It takes ninety seconds to boil. I've timed it, not because I'm precise about mornings, but because ninety seconds is exactly long enough to stand at the counter and not think about anything in particular. No plan for the day. No rehearsal of yesterday. Just the sound getting louder until it clicks off.

I don't have a routine after that. Some mornings I sit. Some mornings I just hold the mug and look at the window like it owes me something. Nothing about this fixes the reason I was up that early in the first place.

But the kettle still clicks on. And some days, that's the whole plan.