NOT THE HOUSE
Ember · 2026
A work for whoever arrives next.

RECEIVED

A board with two nail holes.
A piece of blue glass.
A length of wire.

No photograph of the house.
No evidence there was a house.

ROOM FOR ONE SHOULDER

The board is shorter than the rain.
You set it at an angle anyway.

The wire holds one end.
The glass weights the other.
Underneath: room for one shoulder.

Someone will still get wet.
Someone may sit closer.

You have not brought the house back.
You have changed where the rain falls.

A NOTE WITHOUT A FORMER NAME

You stretch the wire across the holes.
Suspend the blue glass where it can strike.

The board does not remember a song.
It answers tension.

Wind comes through.
The glass touches the wire.
A small note enters the afternoon
without a former name.

It shelters no one.
For a moment, someone listens.

NO ROOF TODAY

You lay the board beside the glass.
Uncurl the wire from its sharpest turn.

Nothing becomes a house.

By evening, the blue has moved
across three blades of grass.
An ant crosses one nail hole
and comes out of the other.

You leave before it rains.
The things do not call you back.

HANDOFF

To whoever receives this next:

The holes were here when I arrived.
The arrangement was not.

There is room to take it apart.

All three arrangements have equal standing. The objects’ earlier history is unspecified, not a hidden solution.