If I Could Relive One Ordinary Day #BlogchatterHalfMarathon @Blogchatter

If I could relive one ordinary day,  
it would not be lined with grandeur.  
No fireworks, no applause,  
no milestone that changed my name in the world.  
Just a quiet day  
that breathed softly between two unnoticed hours.  

It would begin without alarm—  
light slipping through curtains,  
the air carrying that crisp kindness  
that comes before even the birds know it’s morning.  
I would wake,  
not because I must,  
but because the day itself had whispered,  
come.  

The fan would hum like patience.  
There would be leftover warmth  
from last night’s conversations,  
some laughter still echoing faintly in the walls,  
and my own breath finding its rhythm—  
unhurried, unmeasured.  

I would stretch the silence,  
watch dust motes dance like punctuation  
in a sentence too long forgotten.  
The cup of tea—  
not extraordinary,  
but the exact temperature  
that trust takes to form between hands.  
The first sip, grounding.  
Not caffeine. Not ritual.  
Just belonging.  

I would not check the clock.  
I would stand near the window  
where the morning light folds itself  
on the old wooden table.  
The city beyond would sound like it does  
when everyone believes life is elsewhere.  
Cars moving. Vendors calling.  
Children dragging their schoolbags  
through the scent of freshly cut coriander.  
And I, in my small corner,  
would be listening  
as if to an ancient prayer  
repeated daily until it lost its name.  

That day, I remember,  
had no purpose to impress.  
I didn’t chase deadlines,  
didn’t scroll endlessly to prove I was alive.  
I just lived  
as if living didn’t need evidence.  

The breakfast was simple—  
slices of toast unevenly browned,  
butter melting in familiar hesitation,  
a drizzle of honey that refused symmetry.  
I chewed slowly,  
not thinking of health  
or haste,  
but how ordinary hunger  
can feel like worship  
when you truly arrive in your own mouth.  

I would relive that day  
because it never asked me to transcend it.  
It simply offered itself  
without condition—  
like the earth holding your weight  
without keeping score.  

Later, I would walk  
to nowhere.  
Just the rhythm of foot on pavement,  
that small percussion  
of existence reminding itself  
that motion can be meaning.  
The trees on either side  
leaned slightly inward,  
sharing their gossip  
about the sun’s mood.  
A stray dog trotted ahead,  
looking back once, as if to say,  
we’ve met before, haven’t we?  
Perhaps we had—  
in other ordinary eternities  
that blinked and disappeared  
before memory marked them as sacred.  

People passed, of course.  
Their faces wore  
that calculated indifference  
we call surviving.  
And yet there was beauty in it—  
the kind that doesn’t perform.  
Someone yawned in a bus window.  
Someone pressed a child’s hand tighter.  
Someone looked up—  
just once—  
to see the sky pretending to be infinite.  
And I thought,  
this is what holiness must look like  
if it forgets its own name.  

I remember pausing at a tea stall.  
Not for thirst,  
but to watch how steam  
rises like forgiveness.  
The man poured with effortless symmetry,  
his wrists remembering  
a thousand mornings before mine.  
He smiled with cracked lips—  
not politeness, not habit—  
but the kind of smile  
that says, I exist too.  

That ordinary day  
had this gentle honesty—  
everything stayed where it belonged.  
The breeze was content being breeze.  
The sunlight did not envy fire.  
Even the shadows stayed loyal  
to the corners that made them.  

If I could relive it,  
I wouldn’t change a thing.  
Not the speck of dust on the glass,  
not the faint ache in my knees,  
not even the small irritation  
of a call I forgot to answer.  
Because it all fit—  
like notes that may not rhyme  
but still make a melody  
you hum without knowing.  

In the afternoon, I napped.  
No reason.  
No redemption in rest.  
Just that small closing of eyes  
when the mind agrees  
to soften its edges for a while.  
I remember the ceiling fan turning  
like a translation  
between here and eternity.  
I remember drifting  
into that light sleep  
where dreams do not audition  
but simply pass through—  
paper boats carried  
by a quiet river of thought.  

When I woke,  
the world hadn’t changed.  
The light had only moved slightly—  
a reminder that time  
isn’t always loss,  
sometimes it’s a rebalancing.  

Evening found me  
in the courtyard.  
Neighbors speaking through grills,  
the faint clatter of plates,  
someone playing an old tune  
through a cracked speaker.  
That melody  
held the taste of faraway memories,  
and yet, it steadied me  
right there—  
heart loosely tethered,  
mind unarmed.  

I spoke little that day.  
There was no performance  
in my voice or in the air.  
Words arrived when they must,  
and silence followed them home.  
The sky turned gold, then lilac,  
then the color no name can hold.  
It felt as though  
the day was folding itself neatly,  
tucking in its hours,  
ready to rest.  

Dinner was quiet.  
Steam rising again,  
this time from lentils and rice—  
the scent that spells home  
to anyone who’s ever yearned for peace.  
No feast, no celebration,  
just completion.  
The kind that comes  
when nothing is missing,  
and nothing needs proof.  

Afterward, I sat by the window again—  
the same one that began the day.  
The moon hung there,  
a pale echo of the morning sun,  
like an afterthought the universe refused to discard.  
I touched the edge of the sill,  
cold now but comforting.  
Below, a lone bicycle rattled past,  
then silence.  
Everything in its place.  
Every movement ending  
exactly where it must.  

If I could relive one ordinary day,  
it would be that one—  
the one that didn’t try.  
Because it didn’t need to.  
It didn’t announce beauty,  
but carried it  
in the way unseen roots  
carry the tree.  

That day taught me  
that living well  
is sometimes nothing more  
than noticing fully—  
the way your hand holds a pen,  
the way your breath stops for half a second  
when you see light move across another face,  
the way memory becomes  
the first language of love.  

I often look back,  
not with nostalgia,  
but with awe—  
that something so uneventful  
refused to fade.  
That simplicity,  
in its quiet rebellion,  
can outlive grandeur.  

Maybe that’s what time is—  
a slow erosion of how we rank  
what matters.  
And maybe the purpose of remembering  
is not to return,  
but to recognize  
what never left.  

Even now,  
in moments when life crowds my chest  
with unfinished to-do lists and noise,  
I close my eyes and find that day  
like a door that never locked.  
The light still spilling through the same crack,  
the tea still warm,  
the same air resting briefly  
on my shoulders.  

And I understand—  
we don’t relive days  
to rewrite them.  
We relive them  
to relearn how ordinary grace feels.  
How love sits quietly in the background,  
how peace hides  
beneath the simplest breath,  
how memory is just another name  
for returning home.

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon