There's a man upstairs I've never met and I know his whole night by sound.
Home around eleven. The thunk of one shoe, then the other, always a pause between them like he's tired in the same place I am. Water running. The chair that scrapes. Around one he walks the same six steps to the same spot and stands there a while, I don't know doing what, and then the light click and the floor goes quiet.
I've never wondered about him before tonight. He's just the ceiling.
Tonight there was the first shoe. Then nothing. No second shoe, no water, no chair. I've been lying here for an hour listening to a quiet that's the wrong shape.
It's probably nothing. He fell asleep in a chair. People do. I'm not going to knock on a stranger's door at 2am because his routine skipped a beat.
But I can't stop thinking the other thing. That I'd notice. That I know the sound of his night better than anyone knows the sound of mine, and if it were me up there gone quiet, the man downstairs would just think, finally, some peace.