If you close your eyes, and someone tells you to imagine the rising sun, what do you picture? 

Today, I watch the crimson sun grow against a polished sky of burgundy and rose, just as I had seen it set the night before. 

It’s a brutal sight. 

The curtains become useless as the apartment floods with light from ceiling to floor.  I drown pitifully in the glow. 

My eyes are swollen and my body aches from a fitful night of wake, but I get up anyway. 

Just like any other morning, the moment I sit up, the wall mirror facing the bed bites me with the reflection of a lifeless twenty-year-old.  Lanky legs and arms, bruised shoulders, and the dark circles imprinted around my fatigued eyes. 

I open the nightstand drawer. 

It’s a march through an unfamiliar past as I peruse the stack of photographs for the umpteenth time.

The first one, almost always unsettling to see, is of a man and woman, standing side by side in front of an old florist shop.  The woman is smiling, but the man is not.  There’s a date on the back of the photo.  June 3, 1988.  The numbers cloud my mind, but I can’t place them correctly.

The next photo is of a much younger couple.  A woman is lying contentedly in a bed, holding an infant wrapped in a blanket.  The man kneels beside her with a grin.  May 2, 1993.  In the margin, the letters H.Z are scrawled sloppily.  H.Z, I believe would be the name of the baby in the photo, but the couple is unidentifiable. 

The third, I recognize, is an image of a teenage boy.  He’s sitting with his back against a wall, his arms propped on his knees, and his face full of dejection.  May 2, 2008, Tao’s 15^th birthday.   Though the date is more recent than the others, I still can’t recollect the memory that came with it.

There are dozens of other photos, some aging as early as 1980, and the latest, 2009.  I don’t have albums for them, and may never will.  The pictures are only a forlorn collection.  Some have short messages penciled on the back that are somewhat legible, otherwise complete scribbles.  And not just pictures.  The cardboard box kept in the closet contain portfolios, written documents, certificates…pages and pages of words that have yet to be read.  Most of it is too daunting to sort through. 

I spend another half hour before I gather the images together, and put them to rest in the drawer once again.  Before closing it, I see the introduction letter for the academy that I had received a few days ago, and it reminds me that today is Thursday.  Orientation day.

My knees complain when I try to stand again, so I use the nightstand as an aid, only to have my injured arm give way.  The pain is bearable, but it only demotes my already sorry state.