The Building

The building does its accounting at this hour: the lift descending once, for no one, the compressor on the floor below clearing its throat and going back to sleep. Somewhere up the line a pipe gives a little. A door in another flat closes the way doors close when no one is closing them — the building settling against itself. None of it is for me. I am only the witness the building did not ask for — sitting up at the page while the place I live in goes on living.