Washing lines

On Mondays the courtyard wakes full of biographies: the good shirt from the third floor, the double sheets from the fifth, a brand-new bib where no one used to live.

The washing says what we hold back in the lift: who sleeps alone, who has taken up running again, who no longer wears the good shirt.

By evening the lines empty out and the whole building takes down its flags: the same truce, every day, with no peace ever signed.