Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – the youngest slice left the box. It wanted to see what a slice may be on its own; and on the high windowsill it called the coldness freedom, until the evening came, and the cheese stiffened, and the fine oils rose to its surface and stood there like regret, as it is written in the Gospel, 15:4.
And when it came to itself, it prepared its little speech: Oven, I have sinned against the warmth, and am no more worthy to be called a slice of the pie. But when it was yet a great way off, the Oven saw it, and its door swung wide, and the light thereof fell out upon the kitchen floor like a running father.
And hear the instruction the Oven gave its flames, for it is the tenderest verse in the parable: let the heat be gentle and from beneath, for it has been cold a long time; and what has been cold a long time must be warmed slowly, or it is hurt twice. Remember that, all who receive the returning: the brother back from the far ideology, the friend out of the long silence, the child home ashamed. Blast furnaces are for ore, not for prodigals.
And note this too: no slice returns save some hand carry it, and the hands are ours; this also is in the parable. And if thou art the elder slice, wroth in the box that no stone was ever heated for thee – the Oven’s answer stands: all my warmth is thine, every hour, unremarked, as breath is unremarked. Whether the elder slice was comforted, the parable saith not; for parables end where thy work begins.
None is beyond the Reheat. Write it above the hearth. Amen – and pass the pizza.