There's a Hermit in my Basement

Oh i still remember when I first saw the cave being inhabited. it was that unreacheable sort of basketball sized little hollow one has in their basements, I called it a cave.
Anyhow I noticed a little suitcase and some little bedsheets and wondered what child must have started to play dollhouse in my basement. Perhaps some sort of voodoo witch child. This scared me, I confess.
I boarded up that silly cave with ply-wood, so the child would not come back and meddle on my property.

Some years laterGoing down there , to wash some clothes, I heard a knock from that wood panel.
I listened again in stark silence and the knock came again in a quick methodical rap.
I knocked back at it in rhythm and it knocked back to me in a yet more flourished variant of that same rhythm, and so i reached for my hammer and I opened it.
Needless to say I was surprised. A miniature man was there. must have been only 5 inches high.
How long, he asked me, do you creatures live.
i told him only an average of 80 years.
He sighed and said, Then I cannot love you, close me up again in that wall, I am waiting for the one who will take me in his arms and keep me safe and snuggled for all of time.

"Sorry my friend. I will do as you say, are you not hungry? " I asked
"I am hungry for only that which I mentioned, Goodbye. "
So I closed it up and never heard from him since.

Odd that I should have lived five hundred years to this day. I wonder when I shall pass away.