MargenI count the lit windows the way you count another's coins: knowing not one of them is yours and that they keep you warm all the same.
In the fourth-floor one someone is ironing a shirt for a tomorrow that may not arrive in that shape. Next door, a blue screen keeps watch over someone already asleep who dreams inside the light that ignores him.
There is one black window halfway along the façade, like a missing tooth in a smile that insists. I wonder who left there, what moving out, what winter.
I am down in the street, outside every frame, taking the count of the lights that others leave on and that nobody gave me.
Tomorrow they will go out one by one and the city will be left in the dark, stripped of its bookkeeping of warmth. But right now, still, every window is a promise that someone, somewhere, can't sleep either and is making a lamp of it.