Sounds of Summer

       On a hot summer’s night when you leave the windows open hoping for a breeze to cool off the still air, when you twist and toss, throwing sheets off you, flipping your pillow for the fresh side, you hear conversations outside—perhaps neighbours are sitting on their front steps, chatting in the dark, or a couple is taking a midnight stroll, talking as they walk—and you are drawn to the sounds, maybe catching a word here and there, maybe a whole sentence or two. But it’s a distraction, a further distraction from the sleep that is held at bay by the heat and your sweat and the headache starting just between your eyes.

       You think about things, silly things, like the movie you saw earlier that evening, the cinema blessedly air-conditioned, or the comics in the paper that morning, or the plight of a character in the book you’re reading. You play over conversations in your mind, repeat the words of popular songs, recite poetry memorized in junior high school, speeches from Shakespeare learned for Mr. Gildner’s grade 10 English class, and you still can’t sleep.

       Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a real breeze comes through your open bedroom window and cools the sweat on your overheated skin. The neighbors have retired, the strollers long gone; it is quiet and you actually begin to feel chillled. So you pull the sheet up from where it lies bunched at your feet, smooth it out and fold down the edge, cover yourself and turn your pillow one last time before finally drifting off to sleep, so long denied, so welcome now.