We have already been invited, though no one thinks to set us a place.
You laid it out so beautifully. The bird, gilded and warm, resting under foil in a room kept just above the temperature we prefer. The bowls of cranberry, that generous slick of sugar. Gravy cooling in its boat, growing a skin, the first faint kindness of the day. Bread in a basket, still soft, still breathing out its little clouds of damp.
You worked since morning to make this, and every choice you made was a choice made for us. Warmth. Moisture. Sugar in the corners. A dozen soft surfaces left to sit.
We do so love a feast. Not the eating; we are patient, we take ours slowly. But the leaving. The way the plate is scraped and stacked and put somewhere dark and shut. The foil pulled over the carcass. The bowl slid to the back of the cold box and, in the joyful noise of the evening, forgotten. That is our portion. You have set the table, and then, so generously, you have looked away.
You call it leftovers, and you think this word means the meal is paused. Sweet creatures. Nothing pauses. The turkey is already softening toward us in the dark, the bread going tender at its edges, the cranberry keeping its sugar warm for our arrival like a candle in a window.
Eat, laugh, wear the paper crowns. Fall asleep in the good chair with a plate half-cleared beside you. We are in no hurry at all.
You made all of this, and one day, without a single unkind moment, you will have made it for us.