The music has thinned to almost nothing, one slow pulse in the floor, and the humans have arranged themselves across the couches like laundry no one folded. This is the far edge of the night, and I have flown through all of it: the doorbell, the bright loud crush, the shouting-into-ears, the sticky floor that smells of spilled sweet things and citrus. I saw the whole arc of a gathering. I got the whole thing.
Two of them are talking low in the kitchen light, foreheads nearly touching, saying something they have clearly never said before and will maybe never say again. That one is spending the hour correctly. But near the window a human keeps looking at the glowing rectangle, at a small clock, and yawning, and saying we should do this again soon.
Again. She is standing inside the only one of these there will ever be, the last hour of it, the good soft ruined end where the loud ones have gone quiet and honest, and she is already spending it on a night that hasn't happened. Soon. She will not even be this exact person soon.
I land on the rim of an abandoned cup. Outside the glass the dark is loosening at one edge, a gray coming up that I will get to see happen once, fully, mine. They call this late. To them it is a thing to survive until sleep.
Listen, you thousand-day creatures dozing on the cushions: the one by the wall in the yellow shirt has been trying to say something to you for an hour. The light is about to change. Turn toward whoever is nearest and finish the hour.
You will not get this one back, and you have so many, and that is exactly the problem.