5 a.m. in Sapperton
5 a.m. in Sapperton belongs to hospital workers and insomniacs, all of us alone. I am the latter on a curb, one of many on the corner, sticking like burrs to the corduroy shell of this sleepy nowhere. I lean against my trembling apartment building that threatens to sink into the earth whenever a train screams by. This rain-soaked slice of town is wedged between the hospital where I drew my first shuddering breath and the freight tracks where someone surrendered theirs just two weeks ago.
I stand with my cigarette, pupils adjusting to the pre-dawn light. There are no stars. I couldn't sleep in the comfort of my home upstairs, the cocoon of my bed asphyxiating. But it’s suffocating here, too, everything a sterile, lifeless blur. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell the hydrogen peroxide stench of the nearby hospital emergency room. I inhale slowly, and it burns.
There isn’t anything to be awake for unless you have a job to do, a home you can’t stay in, or a mind to crawl out of. I’m saddled with the latter, a ghost tucked behind a windless corner. I watch the workers cross the street. Scrubs blur into backpacks in the not-yet morning. This time is all smoke and shadows and lungs hacking up phlegm, crust in eye corners and coffees in clutched hands. In the hospital, I imagine a heart has just stopped pumping. I wonder if the doctor will care.
In its isolation, this intersection can breathe: Ferns off the sidewalk, moss on the husk of a dead tree, all eaten and spacious inside. Garbage lines the curb on both sides, fringed by snow and grime. Traffic howls down the valley.
The neighbourhood ravens cry above me, rattling to perk my ears. I always look for them, and they for me. Distant train-song is a crutch for sleepless loiterers like me—duh-dun, duh-dun, duh-dun—its terrible pacing reminding us of the sun’s impending return. The ravens, usually a foreboding omen, offer comforting croaks for grievers on leaf-laden benches.
I feel the lives of strangers passing me by, near but never mine to learn. I wonder who’s on their way to work and who just lost a loved one, who’s falling in love and who’s planning a funeral. The buzzing in my head dulls, but the lampposts sing on.
I can’t hear the water past the roar of semi-trucks and the wailing of sirens, but I always know it’s there. Once teeming with sturgeon, the Fraser River now chokes on the lifeblood of industry. Oil lights it ablaze every summer, and still, its currents cradle life beneath the murky surface. I love it all the same.
As alive as it is dead, the hospital hums along, a tremendous beast with smoke stack shoulders. In the distance, the ravens’ caws dissipate into morning dew, beads in a wooden bowl. The pulsing of the freight train matches my heartbeat as I crush my distraction beneath my heel.
About the Author
Aly Laube is a writer, musician, and communications expert with a passion for all things unusual. As an autistic, non-binary, polyamorous lesbian with invisible disabilities and mixed background, they understand the importance of representation and community care. You can find Aly watching scary movies at home with their partners and pets, ranting about bands, and dreaming about how to brighten our collective futures.
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha.
