Sunrise Rituals

Margaret's morning began the same way it had for twenty years: with her orange tabby, Barnaby, weaving figure-eights around her ankles as she shuffled to the kitchen. His purr was like a tiny motor that could still warm her heart even on the coldest January mornings.

She opened the cabinet where her vitamin C bottle sat beside her husband's old pipe holder—empty now for five years. Arthur had sworn by vitamin C, called it his "winter armor" against every cold that tried to take him down. Margaret had kept the ritual going, though she suspected the real armor had been something else entirely: their shared laughter over morning coffee, the way he'd hold her hand during thunderstorms, the comfort of knowing someone else remembered the same songs from 1958.

Barnaby leaped onto the counter as she peeled an orange. He wasn't interested in the fruit—only the attention. Margaret smiled, scratching behind his ears as she thought about her grandson's recent visit. Teenage Lucas had insisted on watching zombie movies with her, of all things. "Grandma, you need to see what's popular," he'd said, handing her a bowl of popcorn while creatures with hollow eyes stumbled across the screen.

She'd found herself thinking about those zombies later—not the monsters, but something else. How we could all become them, moving through our days without truly seeing, without truly feeling. The real zombie wasn't the one who craved brains; it was the one who forgot to savor the sweet juice of a fresh orange, who stopped noticing how a cat's fur felt like sunshine against their palm, who went through motions without meaning.

Margaret popped a vitamin C pill, then folded her hands around her mug of tea. Outside her window, the sky was turning that particular shade of pink that always made her think of Arthur's favorite shirt. Somewhere across the country, Lucas was probably scrolling through his phone, maybe thinking of her. That connection—that invisible thread between people who loved each other—was the real magic. Not vitamins or rituals or any single thing you could hold in your hand.

She lifted her mug in a silent toast to the day ahead. Barnaby purred as if in agreement. The house felt full of ghosts, but the good kind—the kind that reminded you that love, once planted, kept growing long after the gardener was gone.