Young Again

We were two couples, passing along the street at night.  We were all friends.  The girls had been working on this patchwork tapestry that would be displayed on the side of a float in an upcoming parade.  The other guy and I, we'd been up ahead.  We'd seen into the future and we knew how it all turned out.  The tapestry would win all sorts of awards.  It would end up displayed on a grassy median along the town's main road.  We even foresaw the possibility that money would be won.  We saw all of us in new cars, shiny gold watches dangling from our wrists.  My friend turned to his girl with a grin, "Isn't it nice knowing in advance that it's all going to work out for the best?"

And so it went on, the money was won and there was a long string of nights drinking in the city, lights and parties and music and laughter.  As the last echoes of it trailed off, we ended up at this house in the gloamy half-light just before dawn.  We stumbled up the stairs and stomped around in the hushed rooms.  I began to comment on all this, somewhere above, somewhere outside myself and beyond all this, "This is when I was seventeen.  This is where I was.  I keep returning to this moment, drawn to it over and over.  But I've come to it now, young again, fresh as though it were the first time, wonderfully foolish, all my gathered wisdom gone."  Everyone else settled in on the floor somewhere to sleep, but I stayed at the window watching.