The little glass rings on the counter arrived first, and we love them dearly. A ring of spilled wine, a puddle where a cup wept its cold sweat all night onto the wood, the sticky halo of something sweet gone tacky: these are doorways. The humans call it a mess. We call it a beginning.
Look how much they have brought us. Sugar in the carpet fibers, warm and damp from the press of dancing feet. A slice of something bready face-down under the couch, already softening, already reaching for us in the dark underneath. The dishes stacked in the sink, submerged, patient, holding their little pools of water at exactly the temperature we prefer. They think they are hiding it from morning. They are setting a table.
The last ones have gone soft against the walls now, murmuring, sleepy, the music low. Soon they will sleep, and the doors will stay shut, and the warmth their bodies made will linger in the still air like an invitation left out for us. Nobody will open a window until noon.
Nobody will find that grape rolled deep behind the fridge for weeks. We have marked it already, quietly, the way you mark a house you know is coming to you.
In the morning they will rise, ashen and repentant, and they will scrub. Oh, how they will scrub, with their sprays and their bright rags, wiping our doorways away, so certain, so brave. It is our favorite thing about them, this scrubbing. It moves the crumbs to places they forget sooner.
We are not in a hurry. Leave the cup. Leave the corner. Leave the seam behind the baseboard where the damp already gathers like a held breath. You will hand us all of it.
You always do.