Sunlight evades me
Sunlight evades meDays pass in half-sleeped shadowSpring waits at the door
The world follows a steady rhythm of sun and stars, but for a shift worker, those lines often blur.
Working 12-hour stretches in the lab means my relationship with daylight is complicated. In the winter months, I often head into a shift in the dark and emerge long after the sun has tucked itself away. It’s a strange, liminal existence—living in the gaps while the rest of the world is awake.
I wrote this haiku to capture that heavy, quiet fatigue of the "in-between"
There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with the night shift, a "half-sleeped shadow" where you’re physically present but your internal clock is searching for a sun it can't find.
But as the weeks progress, I’m looking toward the threshold. "Spring waits at the door" is my reminder that the cycle is turning. I’m ready for the mornings where the sun beats me to the car, and the evenings where the light lingers long enough to feel like a second wind.
The shadows are long for now, but the light is coming back.
