04:04, mirror hour

Four hours and four minutes: 04:04, the two fours on the clock before darkness starts to lift. A double mirror hour in the hardest stretch of the night, when dawn is still absent and sleep no longer returns easily.

Four and four make eight, the number that comes back around rather than starting out. Read at this hour it is oddly weightless. Nothing can be answered at four in the morning; whatever the count is, it will still be the same count at seven, and the only work available now is lying there knowing it.