When the Table Outgrew the Visit

One evening the narrator calls an old friend to say he will stop by, hears his joy, and then hears something fall inside his voice as the friend answers that the house is not ready. Hospitality turns into a courtroom where plates stand like white judges, spoons ask how many dishes will be served and curtains want proof of household order, while love waits outside with a photograph from childhood, when a mother lifted her teapot and asked only what had kept them so long. In a kitchen a woman chases time so that everything comes out perfect while her guest waits for her in the sitting room, and by the time she sits down he has to leave, telling her he ate plenty and missed her more. Across the neighborhood a lonely man buys fruit and keeps postponing invitations because a wall needs paint and dessert is missing, until his old chair seems to ask where his friends have gone and he writes to a friend: come, I have tea and much to tell. The friend arrives without inspecting the worn wall, the tea goes cold as they talk, and the narrator ends by easing the conditions of his own door, asking his reader to come as he is, since some absent friends never return once we are ready.