Bierce

There is a day that begins with the smooth breath of clouded light. It follows a night of imaginative dreams saturated with colors, sounds, and sensations like an eight-hour winter. This day stretches briefly, eats lightly, bounces gleefully from chore to chore until dusk brings the list of accomplishments to a close. The day pauses, shifts, and falls back into a winter sleep. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. There is only this day folded neatly between warm dreams. Perhaps if I stay up late enough I'll catch a glimpse.

Sarah watches the light play fuzzily on the wall, shifting through the pines outside her window. Birthday today. She reaches a hand above her head and stretches shakily, then slowly closes her eyes again. She hears voices somewhere and other, shorter sounds that aren't voices. They are all as fuzzy as the light, and she cries helplessly.

Sarah wakes again and watches the light through the shifting pines play much lower now, on her bedspread. Birthday today. All those hours lost, and so much to get done. She throws the covers off and steps onto a pile of dirty laundry. Laundry first, then shower, then work.
No, birthday today. Work first, because eventually Sarah will want to play. Laundry Schmaundry.

Still in her smelly pyjamas, Sarah fixes herself a cheese sandwich. It's her birthday today. She will find thirty-seven happy wishes on her facebook page. An old high-school friend will send her an amusing Hallmark e-card. Her co-workers will expect her to hand out candy or cookies. She won't. She has passed the line, has been to that place in her life that all the previous birthdays were moving towards, and now she's moving away from it as if the future smells like (*sniffs Winnie the Pooh T-shirt*) her.