Returning

He came to challenge, inspire and calm. They ate. Pasta with chilli, sitting on the white-sheeted couch. He said do you like my new shoes. She said I hate them. They laughed. The fire paid homage to the mood with a dance from its Book of Memory. They spoke of long ago, laughed and scoffed in condemnation, sipped red and talked. Of a country of songlines and mysterious beginnings. He cracked macadamias on the hearth. They smoked. Leonard Cohen called from the back room, there's a crack, a crack, in everything, that’s how the light gets in, that’s how the light gets in! They spoke of the heart’s longing to satisfy its hunger and of the vascularity of the gut. They sipped Rooibus with honey. Watched the nightly news and wished they hadn’t. He descended the stairs, lined with fallen camellias in the cold dark night to feel for wood. They ate Lindt in tiny broken squares, it had to last. She touched on her drowning plimsoll line and He of children and death. He answered her call, this messenger of good fortune. He came back