Somewhere, out in the deep recesses of space, a dingy wood shack  travelled along by the pull of this planet or that star, twirling with no particular orbit; some days an ellipsis, a circle, a  broken line, flitting about like a drunken bee.
 
An old, shortish man lives alone in the shack, human by all accounts, though it would be more accurate to describe him as consisting entirely of atomic particles randomly assorted that happen to look and act like an old, shortish man who lives in a dingy wood shack travelling by the pull of this planet or that star… The old, shortish man - how to describe him? He's bipedal. Ten fingers, ten toes, a set of teeth (though he's mislaid a few over the millennia), thinning white hair fine as spider's silk and wispy as wet brush strokes; his wet brown eyes tinged with glaucoma, and a pair of ears-squashed on either side of his rutabaga and liver spotted head. He has other facets too like arthritic joints that pop and creak when he gets up from his twin bed and entirely no brain to speak of. No heart, no lungs, no veins. He was born whole cloth after the so-called Big Bang. His person, his shack, and all its contents, popped into existence, just as he always was and always would be. But that doesn't stop him thinking and feeling.
        
The shack's furnishings are sparse, but clean: a round rug over which a burgundy Laz-e-boy rests the front part of its metal carriage, the arms worn and frayed. There's a single burner stove against a blue and white wallpapered wall ; a hot plate he doesn't bother plugging sits next to the stove; there's a smattering of yellowed books, their spines mostly uncracked in the living room within reach of the Laz-e-boy and it's rug; and there's cabinets with peeling oak veneer on either side of a scoured sink, the zinc rubbed down to the steel underneath sitting beneath a grimy picture box window looking out onto, usually, nothing.

One of the peeling cabinets has a broken hinge that used to bother him but he's gotten used to it (or had always been and has false memories of a before that never existed - it's hard to say) and in that peculiarly human way of attaching feelings and lives and stories onto things that have no business having stories or lives or feelings, it has become his favorite of the cabinets because it reminds him of an old jowly dog he once never had. Some of the other objects have stories too: the yellowed books, the hot plate, the Laz-e-boy but not the sink or the stove or the rug. They might have secret lives of their own, feelings about this or about that, but he never bothered to share that with them.
        
There's a small refrigerator and ice box, too. It has rounded edges and a long silver handle he has to depress to close and unlatch to open. Greasy with fingerprints, sitting on a milk crate that reads: UNAUTHORIZED USE OF MILK CRATE and the fridge is filled with bits and bobs like an old head of iceberg lettuce that had gone reddish on the spine, and liver pâté with a mysterious chunk missing from the middle, but mostly it was filled with unopened milk bottles.

The milk bottles arrived every morning at the front door, droplets of bottle sweat running down their smooth and slender 750 ml glass and a red wax seal imprinted by a machine that had yet to have been invented and then was no longer in use when it had. The old man had tried to discern who brought the bottles each morning, without fail for as long as he could remember, and had even gone so far as staying awake all night, which was rather difficult as the nights could last anywhere from a moment to an eternity and required several pots of hot coffee and some light calisthenics to make it through until the daylight. He'd read from the old yellowed books he had lying around, mostly he used them for coasters, but every once in a while, when his eyes weren't so sleepy and the electric light not so bothersome, he'd crack their ancient spines and read a line or two before he'd grow anxious he'd miss the starrise and then who knows when a starrise would return? He'd sit in the Laz-e-boy or stare out the window, willing himself to focus, but his mind would drift away from him like the steady rock of his shack through the cosmos.
        
He wondered about the milkperson. What would he say to them when he found them, leaning down to deposit the bottle of milk on the scratchy brown door mat that had once never read Welcome. What might they look like. Would they have brown hair and blue eyes or blue hair and brown eyes or no hair because they suffered from a severe case of alopecia, but of course he wouldn't mind. They could be a hunchback or a toad, a literal toad he could scoop into his robe pocket for safe keeping. He wouldn't mind at all.

He hoped they'd wear a hat and a pinstriped jumpsuit, belted at the waist even though it wouldn't need to because it was, well, a jumpsuit. He wondered if they'd like to come in out of the heat or from the cold, and have a cup of tea or a cup of joe. He'd been waiting to open the milk until they'd arrived, he wanted to wait and enjoy the milk with them.  Did they enjoy their job delivering milk all day; had it been their idea or had their small-minded family who didn't share their sensitivities or their desires to rise above the cloche of small towniness forced them into the milk business? Had they milked a cow and drank from the teat, would they take him to their dairy farm, if they had one, and could he milk the cows and drink from the teat and have hot buttered biscuits with jam their mother had made from the blackberries that grew wild along the river where they'd learned how to fish and had their first kiss on a starry, moonlit night?  He considered all these things and more except when he rocked himself out of his Laz-e-boy to make another pot of joe or to perform a jumping jack or two to keep himself awake. But, morning would break over the shack like a freshly laid egg whose yolk was orange and pristine, cracked into a warm skillet limned with bacon grease, and he would wait, breathlessly, his ear to the butt of a cup pressed to the door, but there would be no knock, no tap-tap, no heavy thudding boot heels or swishing sneakered feet, no popping tires, or backfiring engine of an old milk truck in need of retirement, or the tinkling of glass as it settled on the concrete. As the egg of the day crisped and fried, the old, shortish man would have a look, just a little peek through the window, just to see.

Empty space. Stars far out. Their distance so great they nearly twinkled out before their light had barely reached his squinting eyes. And on the mat would stand one lonely bottle of milk, perfectly chilled and starting to sweat, the seal of red wax like an old hunting cap. Perhaps he had just missed the milkperson. He'd berate himself. Why didn't he listen harder? Why didn't he do three, no four jumping jacks an hour? Another pot of coffee, another…. And he'd resolve to try again another day, just like all the other days. He retrieves the bottle then and sets about making himself a bowl of oatmeal, crusty and dry, with no cream to fill the yawning cracks.

He tried to catch the milkperson relentlessly. He'd set an alarm, but having no way of knowing when dawn would come he'd overshoot it by about a hundred years and wake up to a rather long and sunny day. Unperturbed, if not a tad disappointed, he'd wait for a long day to end and the longer night to begin. He'd stay awake through the day, sometimes only a few moments before darkness settled in, and other times the light seemed to go on forever, and he feared night would never come, but once, and only once, after many millennia of dying to meet the milkperson, his reveries decayed to anxiety. What if the milkperson was rude; what if they laughed at him and his little shack? He wasn't sure if he could tolerate someone poking fun at his home. He'd grown so attached to it (or had always been and false memories…)- his friend the broken hinge, the Laz-e-boy, the yellowed books, the unplugged hot plate-he'd given them stories, brought them to life, poured in his feelings: the broken hinge and his wild past but his reformed yet scarred ways; the Laz-e-boy soldier who'd never deserted his post, kept his shoes shined, and his helmet clean but had still been worn down by the long slog of a never-ending war; the yellowed books who had dreamt of being sunflowers; the hot plate who couldn't abide heat.

Maybe meeting the milkperson was a bad idea, a terrible idea, the worst idea an old, shortish man with no brain or heart or lungs or veins had ever had; maybe he'd made a mistake in waiting all this time when he could have been spending it amongst friends who understood him, who loved him unconditionally, who wished him no harm. Not like the milkperson who wanted to tear out his glaucomaed eyes, and set fire to his hair, and munch on his toes, but then bony-fingered dawn began prodding at the shack without any warning. He tried to shut the curtains, but the light clawed through the moth-eaten holes, sending dazzling arrays of pure white light across the dark amber floor. The old, shortish man heard a cackle, a knock; he felt a finger press into his wrinkled forehead. He stumbled over a book and fell into his chair. The old, shortish man his old lungs heaving and reddish urine threatening to course through what remained of his legs, cleared his throat, but he couldn't speak. He searched for escape, but the hot plate glowed and broken hinge winked with starrise. Hiking up his dark brown slacks and adjusting his worn cotton belt, he ran a leathery hand over his cat-licked hair, the old man knew he could face this milkperson and tell them to go and never come back again.

The knob turned smooth in his hand. He puffed out his chest and prepared himself for his first and only fight. He closed his eyes to the light as the door swung open, but there was no one there, just a bottle of milk, perfectly chilled, just beginning to sweat with a seal of red wax like an old hunting cap. He called out into the void but his voice made no sound except as an echo inside the shack, dancing amongst the dust motes in the starrise.

The old, shortish man plucked up the milk bottle with a crack of his knees and eased the door shut with a creak. He sighed to the room and it sighed back. Things just were. Life just was.  There could have been another him, a him who didn't love milk and had no friends like broken hinge or yellowed books, who wouldn't stay up waiting in the hopes of meeting the milkperson and inviting them in a for a cup of tea with a splash of cream or a cup of joe and offer them all of himself and everything he had and ask for nothing in return. Things were just as they were and all that they were, but not all that they could be. He fried himself six strips of bacon and left the grease for a freshly laid egg . He squeezed the wax hunting cap from the lip of the newest bottle and drank the milk straight, perfectly chilled and just starting to sweat.