It's about crackling fire and embers, the glow at the center of the fire, centered in a stone ring, knee high, so little kids lift on their palms to see in. It's about the sweet timelessness of an acoustic guitar playing stewball was a racehorse, and singing the words as you sit, just sitting, not watching, not seeing, just looking, just being, living for the now that lasts as long as the night does when you're just about to fall asleep.

And it's about pine scent and her hair, and it's just what you breathe in, for the space that you see when you wake is utter dark, and you have to blink to make sure your eyes are open. It's an equal warmth and you know you shouldn't take her at your side for granted but you do because neither of you want to think to pass the time. It's feeling separate from the world by uniting with your friends and music about smoke from a far away fire.

It's about the nothingness of null input from your chest and leg and arm pains that means you had good clean back-cracking fun today. It's her voice and yours being one and not minding when the others fall into key; the contentedness of a soft place in your pillow.

It's about tasting the lake you swam in that afternoon and the dust of a cabin underused and the open air. It's the ridges in the log that don't ache because your ass is just fine from horseback, thank you, and finding what you're looking for if you let it happen and how she's nestling against you and the tint of her hair from the fire and looking at it like you and the embers want to fall asleep too, but that would waste the moment and now they're singing miss american pie and you just found a dry levy and it doesn't matter because you drive a ford and you want to put your lips to her hair and you don't, because she's not to be disturbed, and you don't mind because neither are you, and the song ends and you fall from thirty five thousand feet but with a parachute so you land safely and walk away to her cabin and put her at her front door, and trust her friends to get her into her bed because momma said not to go into her place unless she invites you.

And it's about how you wake the next morning and hear a water fight on outside and wonder if the fire is still burning or if you need breakfast because you ate the extra burgers last night at the grill, and the candy you found in her pocket and you realize that you had given it to her but that's okay because in giving it to her you made it both of yours and you share it all anyway. Even the ones with good fillings.

And it's about staring at the bedsprings of the bunk above you and smelling the dust and age and hearing the happy shining people. You can still taste her hair and see the fire and you get up and go over to beat her at poker unless she learned to cheat from you.