Seven years ago, the second time the cicadas visited, I feared it’d be my last chance to see them.

I stood on the porch and listened to their raucous chirping across the fields, as the sun painted the sky in honeyed shades, and when night fell I opened my bedroom window and welcomed my diminutive friends inside.

Six of them joined me, their strident calls reassuring each other as they hopped across my desk.

Even then, my eyes weren’t good in the dark - and the candle I’d lit cast so little light - that I dared not move too hastily lest I injure my guests.

Instead, I let them explore, listened to their excited chirps as they found my papers, feet tip-tapping upon the tight rows of braille, exploring my education.

They danced on my brailler, the keys too heavy to succumb to their feather-weight touch, though they leapt high in mighty bounds.

Today I stand on that same porch, listening for the first calls of the cicadas emerging from their extended senescence. The evening is beautiful, the breeze cool and airy, the colours of dusk recalling days past when I could better appreciate the nuance of the clouds.

I don’t try to look for my guests, but once their sunset song is done I welcome them inside once more.