Time to light the lamps
on the end tables
in the clean, dated living room
and welcome expected guests
to your home for sitting time
where all will talk to each other
in awkward tones as they’ve not sat
together this way for a few years. 

Now to the kitchen to unwrap
the gifted food and the soft drinks.
A few from the other room come in
to offer help and together you move
the food around, the plastic glasses,
the napkins, the paper plates. 
Everyone’s so careful not to spill
a thing and in fact nothing spills.
All remains perfectly placed as if
that’s how the rest of the world
stays intact.

After, you speak out loud
to the remaining guest:
the invisible, the unspoken,
the one they came for.

“It was nice, wasn’t it?”