On a hot and sultry morning
of a sweltering summer day,
With a thunderstorm arriving
and a cold front on its way,
There came rapid fire knockings
making the thin wood front door sway,
And from the backdoor shouting neighbours argued over the missing yesterday.
The kettle hissed like it knew a secret,
windows filmed with breathless heat,
curtains clung to the glass in surrender
to a sky bruised purple with dark and cloudy feet.
I approached the flimsy front door
with a dark and ominous dread,
Opening the door, looked down
at the well worn hollowed tread.
Expecting feet I saw none,
A suitcase left there instead,
Frowning I glanced at the label,
Recognising writing from the Homestead.
The neighbours outback were close to brawling,
Arguing that it was each other's fault they woke to their kids' bawling,
That each had made the other drunk
Resulting in together on a bed falling,
And who knew why the other was stalling.
The thunder cracked its knuckles then,
rolled its shoulders in the sky,
and rain came down in silver nails
that hammered earth awry.
I hauled the suitcase through the door,
its handle slick with age,
It thudded on the hallway tiles
like an actor claiming stage.
The kettle shrieked betrayal steam,
the lights performed a flicker,
The label bore the Homestead crest
in ink grown faint and thicker.
No stamp. No date. No sender named.
Just three words in looping thread:
"Returning what was borrowed.
Remember to keep the Keeper fed."
Outside the quarrel reached a pitch
fit to split a fence in two,
accusations flung like crockery
no apology in view.
I knelt beside the travel case,
the brass clasp cold and tight,
The storm leaned close to listen in,
pressing day toward night.
It snapped.
Not loudly. Not with drama.
Just a patient, quiet click.
And from within there breathed a chill
that made the warm air stick.
Within lay neither cloth nor shoe,
nor trinket wrapped with care,
But jars of dust like ground-down dusk
and one long silver hair.
A ledger bound in weathered hide
sat nestled in the gloom,
Its pages thin as onion skin,
its margins smelling of loam and loom.
The first page bore my family name,
in ink both old and wet,
A column marked as "Borrowed Days,"
another labeled "Debt."
Beside last week, a careful hand
had scratched a single line:
"One yesterday removed at dawn.
Sustenance received. All fine."
Outside, the neighbours' fury stalled
as though the air grew thick,
Their words went blunt, their gestures slow,
their tempers strangely sick.
The children's cries bent into hush,
mid-wail, mid-breath, mid-frown,
And every clock in every house
refused to count back down.
The jars began to tremble then,
a faint and hungry rattle,
Like teeth against a winter spoon
or bones before a battle.
The silver hair uncoiled itself,
and drifted through the air,
It brushed the ledger's open page
and settled neatly there.
A whisper moved along the hall,
not wind and not quite sound,
But something older than the storm
that circled, thin and round.
"Payment made," it seemed to say,
yet still it lingered near,
For hunger is a patient thing
that fattens well on fear.
The thunder bowed against the roof,
the cold front crossed the gate,
And somewhere deep beneath the floor
there stirred a pulse that ate.
One jar cracked first.
A seam of yesterday escaped
in scents of bread and rain,
in echoes of a laugh half-heard
and absence shaped like pain.
The ledger ink began to spread,
new lines in curling thread:
"Keeper stirred. Appetite confirmed.
Increase the portion fed."
And in the quiet after that,
when even storms grow still,
I understood the borrowed thing
was never time nor will.
It was the simple, fragile act
of living day by day.
And something in this house of mine
had learned to dine that way.