I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a baby crying. I’d thrown on my robe and jumped into my slippers—wrong-footed—and had already begun to heat water on the stove for her bottle when I rubbed my eyes and remembered I lived alone. I walked through my apartment touching things, touching everything I own—laptop, backpack, laundry baskets—and then, for a long time, watched the snow fall on the street. When I slid back into my sheets, I listened to the radiator purr and the old building pop as it settled on its haunches, thick concrete walls sunk in the dirt a century ago.