You are already cleaning.
Let your eyes close.
And let it be a room of yours.
Ordinary.
When you go through without looking at it.
There is a cloth in your hand.
It's been there a while.
Take a breath.
And let it go out with nothing pushing it.
You did not decide to do this.
Some part of the week comes around and the cloth is in your hand and you are going along the surfaces.
It isn't work.
You are not thinking about any of it.
The hand knows the routine.
Let the house be quiet.
The particular quiet of a place with somebody else in it.
Somewhere,
Not near.
Now the shelf.
About chest height.
Let it be wherever yours is There's one thing on it.
It is theirs.
Let it come as itself.
Small enough to sit up there and made to be used.
Something with a job.
You know they're hands on it.
You watched them handle it more times than you could put a number to.
And you would know the way they held it from across a room.
There is a sound from another part of the house.
Them at something ordinary.
It goes on while you stayed here.
And there was a stretch when you went through what was theirs.
You do not have to go back into it.
Only that you did the whole of it.
Drawer by drawer.
A decision on every single thing.
And you did not stop until there was nothing left to decide on.
This was in your hands when you finished.
So you said it here.
Up where I can be seen.
Off to itself.
With clear wood around it and nothing next to it.
Not where it would get used,
Where it would be looked at.
It hasn't moved since.
The sound from the other room has not stopped.
The cloth comes to the shelf.
You go around it.
You always have.
The cloth runs the wood on one side and comes up and goes down on it the other.
And the thing stays where it is.
You have never picked it up to clean under it.
Now look at the wood where it stands.
There's a shape on it.
A clean patch,
The size of the base,
Where nothing has settled.
And it isn't in it.
Not by much,
Half an inch,
Out to one side,
Enough that the clean shape shows along one edge.
A thin bright line of wood that hasn't had anything on it in a long time.
You go looking for a reason it would do that by itself.
The floor,
Something heavy going past.
The shelf not sitting true.
Nothing that happens on its own sets a thing down straight.
Somebody moved it.
They took it down off here.
They had it in their hands.
They used it for whatever it's for.
And then they came into this room and put it up again.
Your own hand has not been on it in longer than you can say.
Stay in front of it.
Don't put your hand out.
What have you put out of use that they still come to?
The cloth is still in your other hand.
Look at where they left it.
They meant it to go where it goes.
You could see that.
It's square to the edge.
It's turned that way.
It was turned.
They were careful with it.
They know where it belongs.
They have been through this room for years,
And they have seen it up here with the space around it.
And they worked out on their own that this is the place.
So they used it.
And they bought it in.
And they got it close.
You still go along the shelf.
You still do the room.
Whatever they ask you for,
You do it.
The same as you ever did.
There is a thing you say when they come to you.
The same words,
In the same order,
Every time.
Nothing they have got would tell them any different.
They still come to you the way you come to somebody who's here.
The dust doesn't stop for this.
That is already going down on the bright line.
Come through here a few more times,
And there will be less of it showing.
Long enough.
And the clean shape will be where the thing is now.
And there will be nothing to say it was ever anywhere else.
You will go around it.
Now let the room go out.
The shelf.
The wood.
What's standing on it.
Come down into your own hands.
Empty.
Wherever they have been resting.
There is a sound in the place you are in.
It has been going the whole time.
Let that be the thing.
Open your eyes.
You keep it.
