"Another Tomorrow"
Keith Morse


	I woke up scared today.  I was rudely shocked into consciousness by the usual alarm clock, but it was when I came to my senses that I understood just how scared I was.  I felt like spent fuel, like sullied oil, void of worth but still being forced into the cylinders.  It was the customary morning exhaustion, but today it felt different.  Today I was afraid.  I didn't want to go back into the machines again, or ever again.  
	Each sunrise is followed by a temporary lapse of amnesia.  Awakening to the new day is thus postponed while one struggles to remember who he is, where he is, and what he will do today and if it is worth doing.  Today this blissful ignorance faded slowly but surely into a series of stabbing realizations which, one by one, anchored me to the pillow.	 
	It doesn't matter what awaited me, for I could see no means of escaping the vicious queue (without having to struggle to understand just what Unlawful really means).  This morning I lay awake and I was scared.  I was scared of what this new day had in store for me after I leave my sanctuary: places I would have to go where people await me who want from me that which I know I cannot give them today.  There's always something to be afraid of when venturing into the darkness, but today I felt more scared than ever.
	What was it that shook me so?  I can't even remember now.  Was there a test?  How much homework was undone?  How much homework was forgotten?  How much was remembered all too late?  It is trivial now, the day is survived, but it is the feeling of the fear which sticks with me.  It wasn't just something that awaited me today that scared me; it was everything.  My brain pushed and pulled itself in six directions at once and, overcome, gave up trying to organize.  The mind escapes its responsibilities by way of fear.
	And yet somehow I managed to not only betray emotion but defy logic as well.  Somehow I convinced my mind to trigger my legs to propel me from my warm bed to the cold room beyond, from the safe shielded home to the harsh winds outside, from the freedom of the open road to the confines of the crowded hallways, just like yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, morning after morning ad infinitum.  And tonight I'll go to sleep again and hope for another tomorrow, one that won't be quite so frightening as this one.  And I'll go to sleep.  Sleep.  Indeed, that is the easiest ingredient, for I feel so very tired nowadays...