window

Across the street, there are 18 windows, 12 make up one building and six make up half of another. The lights are all off. The light in the fifth window on the second floor usually stays on the longest. It glows blue-white from two bulbs in a ceiling fixture, you can see the bulbs clearly and you can see a man's shirt hanging by the window to dry. Sometimes you see two little boys, watching the street or eating icepops.

The other windows are lit a buttery yellow from lamps and ceiling fans. The blue-white room is really on the third floor. The first floor gets skipped because no one seems to live there, and because those windows are mostly blocked by the leaves of a single tree, so you wouldn't know if they did.

There are two fire escapes, one on top of the other, that noone ever sits on. And there are two stoops leading to the buildings alcoves. One has a lit diamond window cut out of the door, the other a semi-circle above it. You can't see the cars driving by, but you can hear them passing, like erasers on a chalkboard, the clunk of the manhole, and the shadow sound of the heavy air, before it turns still again.