Fourth
It is a summer night, with all that meant in the best times of our earlier and still-unfinished youth. There are people at our house, and some will sleep here: they have changed into the clothes they will wear while they dream. The spirits and beer and cigarettes might be candy: though they seemed once to be accoutrements of adulthood, they now have the mildest effects, as though they are gummy taffies or Pixie-Stix.
After the fireworks we came home. We have aged now back into childhood: we want the simplest things and laugh easily. Our domestic affairs are as settled as they were when they belonged to tall and deep-voiced adults talking in low tones in another room. We want nothing but to laugh, so we play games and feel the breeze in the air: it is like a gift from an Earth momentarily without catastrophe, at least so far as we know. Like children now, we read no news.
In the searing intensity of our early twenties sleep never came, or when it did it did so after some bender or in the early morning. Now we feel again like boys and girls who want to see the late television shows but cannot keep our eyes open: we fight yawning slumber as it moves over our minds, making everything seem dreamy and open and resonant; every sound has an echo, ever light a haloed glow.
It is so hard to stay awake in this beautiful summer night, but we fight to; and the fight feels good because we know that sleep will be a gift like the breeze: cool, soft, carefree.
