and I fight the urge to live inside my telephone

The morning barely brightens from the night. The sky seems sodden, stained cotton wool mopping up the early light at my window. I am just awake enough to be able to step between the bright populace of my dreams and this dull room.

 Outside, the street seems silent. There are no footsteps, no cars growling their way up and over the hill.

   I lie, slowly blinking myself awake. I can see the faintest apricot blush on the building opposite. As I watch it ripens then fades to drizzle and the rain comes and releases sound at the open window. The patter on leaves creates the trees outside, on the fabric of an umbrella gives life to the person beneath. I get up from bed and go over to the window to have a look.
 On the table my phone pings. A message appears on the screen then fades. I reach for it then see the reflection of my glass bowl on the window sill caught in its black screen. It is framed there in a lozenge of light, its beautiful design and fading colours made by a friend such a long time ago has been captured and accentuated.
 I pause.
 Too often I live inside my phone (a line from a song I love). I hesitate at this habitual urge to reach out and dive into the bright cyber-lit rabbit hole. I move away from the phone, admiring the bowl’s reflection there looked at from different angles.
  I turn to the window and watch the rain move the leaves in the beech trees and the hedgerows. Such a pleasing sound. Two people laugh in the rain,  off to the local shop for their morning papers and a wee chinwag. This is the pace of life and I must find and find and keep on finding it again. This is the message my friend’s bowl has sent me across the decades and this morning I am listening.
 The phone suddenly pings again and I look down at it. The bowl’s reflection is lost as the phone’s light illuminates the incoming message.