vi.
there is a door to the outside, and the building, with its usual quiet, has left it ajar. not invitation, exactly; more the kind of openness an old neighbour shows a friend — go through, if you want to, the air is gentle tonight.
you step through. the garden is not a garden in the careful sense. it is the building's outside; the small piece of world it has agreed to be next to. there is grass that has been low all summer. there is a low fence. there is the moon, already, even though you had not expected it to be up yet.
the moon is the building's other lamp. it is at one of the heights it is sometimes at — not full, not new, the in-between that asks nothing of you. you look at it because everyone in the history of standing has looked at it. you are joining a quiet society.
your breath is visible. you had not realised the night had cooled. somewhere behind the fence is something small living its small life. it does not call out; you do not interrupt it. breath goes on between you both.
this is the half-way of the procession. the building knows. you have come down through it and now you are briefly out of it, standing in the small pasture of yourself. you have time to be here. it has been provided.
when you turn back to the door, it has not moved, but the room you came through looks different from this side. it always does. that is the small generosity of going outside even for two minutes: it returns you to the interior as a slightly other person.