Morning After

I fell ill- fever, sore throat, nasty cough.

The feeling in the first morning of recovery is special.

I feel weak but hopeful. I feel refreshed, and it’s a rare kind of refreshed.

Perhaps it’s because I am slowly regaining smell, and so I am only smelling a fraction of all smells. These are strange olfaction phenomenon – the edge of burnt coffee smell, the fringe of the morning breeze, the vague scent of sunrise and dawn air.

Or maybe my body is in a good mood because it is no longer suffering. The engines are restarting and are eager to get going. Perhaps my body is satiating me with happy hormones so I work hard to recover next time I fall ill.

Or perhaps I am conflating the sense of fragility with the sense of preciousness. I feel weak and light, wobbly and novel, unfamiliar and anew.