I Let a Homeless Man Stay One Night and Came Home to a Different Apartment

was warm and close and smelled like something that had been cooking long enough to become itself.

Outside, the street did what streets did: buses and bicycles and the particular noise of a city that did not know or care about any of it.

Inside, the door latched cleanly, the way it had since October. The window over the sink was open an inch, the way continue reading …