The clouds were heavy; the people all were sleepy—as if the clouds were full of dreams that were being pushed down upon the people gently but relentlessly and with no remorse.

The clouds hung in the sky—heavy with dreams, purple and grey and black straining through white outlines. Full to bursting.

The people yawned and stretched and yawned even wider, remembered how it felt to be exhausted children unable to hold their heads aloft. They shoved their knuckles into their eyes and rubbed. They thought about their beds even though it was the middle of the day.

And just when the clouds could not possibly be any more fecund, fatter or impregnated they became more so: giant billowing pillows in the sky, and if the people could have only let go of gravity and tumbled up they would have and then they would have slept deeply and happily.

And there was one little boy in South Dakota who did. Let go. He had always had a tenuous hold on this world and he just gave it up and fell feet-over-head up into a cloud and slept curled like a cat in an especially puffy feather duvet.

Other folks with feet on the ground drooped like the exhausted tulips in their gardens. They made their way to their kitchens to put the tea kettle on or make coffee but got sidetracked by their couches and their armchairs or even their children’s little beds which still held warmth from the night before.

The dogs looked at their people with lazy eyes and refused to take their walks, lying down on the sidewalk and stretching out their chins, waiting for dreams of rabbits and long beaches to fall upon their furry backs.

The air was almost warm and almost still and almost wet and vibrated on low, a humming, thrumming singing deep down in the ears and in the heart.

And one after another after another the people all stopped their tiny daily battles. They forgot their coffees and they forgot their schedules and calendars. The forgot their clients and their patients and their appointments and even their worries. They closed their computers. They closed up shop. They yawned and stretched and yawned and stretched one last time. They closed their eyes.

And they slept. They slept as if they had no bones. As if they had never had a sore muscle or a strained back. Their ligature gave up its grip and they slept like heaping piles of hot spaghetti.

And they dreamt. The dreams fell down upon them in heaps and heaps.

In Florida an eighty-three-year-old great-grandmother dreamt she wore a gold-spangled skirt and arrived upon the back of an alligator to a cocktail party whose guests were all her many lost loves.

In Ohio a long-haul trucker slept with his mouth pressed against the grimy glass of the window and dreamt he was home in bed with his mouth against the cheek of his wife of thirty years.

In New Mexico a young mother dreamt with her newborn against her heart and their dreams got all tangled up so that the mother dreamt she was hatching from an egg and flying away and the infant dreamt she was standing at the stove and roasting green chilies that filled the room with smoke that stung the eyes.

In California a man who had just turned one-hundred-and-three dreamed that he died and was escorted from his body by four finely-matched white stallions before he did, in fact, die in his sleep and follow his dream from his body.

In Maine two teenage lovers fell asleep in the middle of making love and he slept inside of her and they both dreamt the same dream.

The clouds spent their dreams upon the people who dreamt them and the clouds became lighter and lighter and lost their bruised appearance and lifted to a more reasonable altitude so that the air was less heavy as well, and then the wind came up and blew the clouds away.

And the people woke up slowly and with groans and dug themselves out of their slumbers and stretched and stood and went upon their business but couldn’t shake the sense that their naps had been out of the ordinary and that their tiny daily battles were overrated.