I awake in a blue shroud. Dawn’s pale glow seeps through cotton cobalt sheets, an azure wave under which I drift, dozing in a soft haze, eyes half-closed and crusted with tear sand. The shuffle of feet, the scuttle of sea crabs, pull me from the reverie dissolving in this Yves Klein tapestry. Your thin silhouette is a fleeting work of art, a mere two-dimensional paper cutout of the round, heavy night dweller. Your panicked pace and jerking joints perform my toy theatre; now for the scene of a brave and daring escape. 
As the door shuts tightly behind you, I surface gasping for air in one exasperated gesture. Airtight. A hot balloon expands against the cage of my ribs; taught pleura, a pulmonary distortion hardened and crackling as it rises. The growing pressure pulsates with the clock’s flashing red, heartbeats drowned in the blue filtered light of another empty morning.