We have already been invited in; the humans just have not noticed yet.
They stand it upright in the bright hallway and fill its glowing belly with sugar, whole spirals of it, wrapped and dry and dreaming of us. Chocolate is only patience with a coating. Chips are just fields waiting to remember the ground. And behind the glass, where the machine breathes out its faint cool sigh, the air weeps a little onto the metal coils, a bead here, a film there, in the seams the cleaning cloth never reaches.
We love a seam. We love a corner that hums warm from the motor and drips cool from the fridge, because that is where the argument between hot and damp is settled, and it is always settled in our favor.
They think they have sealed it. How generous, to gather so many sweet things in one dark warm cabinet and then lock the door, as if a lock has ever meant anything to a spore. As if glass could hold back weather. They feed it coins and it feeds them sugar, and the whole gleaming ritual is really just a long, kind delivery of compost that has not been told it is compost.
We are in no hurry. We are already resting on the rubber gasket, in the drip tray no one empties, in the crumb behind the flap. We will not rush the crisp packet or the untouched pastry rotating slowly in its lit little heaven.
Everything sweet comes home. Everything warm comes home. Everything damp was always already ours.
We are simply the part that waits by the door.