Company

It's raining buckets here in the city and there are three big boys, stringbean men, all six-foot-plenty of them sprawled in my house, laughing and eating the three cheese mac and cheese my husband made, refilling plates and settling in for the evening, debating whether to go see that movie or hide out here from the rain. My daughter sits in their midst, still enthralled by Psych on Netflix on her battered laptop, slipping in and out of the weaving net of voices, my husband getting his threads in there too. Tomorrow morning after he leaves for work, I will find the boys asleep under blankets, on couches or on long pillows on the floor, as if they are still 10 years old at the camp by the lake where they all went in the summers, these almost full grown men with their boyness still a sweet mischief in the air around them, especially when they sleep.