MargenFor eleven years I fell asleep to the footsteps of the man upstairs. The night they stopped, I did not know how to sleep.
I never knew his name. I knew other things: that he got up twice, that he dragged a chair to the window at around three, that in winter he coughed as if apologising. His floor was my ceiling and a whole life moved about up there, a life I listened to lying on my back in the dark, following the map of his routines the way you follow someone else’s breathing.
The ambulance made no noise. That was the strange part, that they took him away in silence, him, who had made so much sound. Now the ceiling is still. I bought a plant for the corner that used to be underneath his chair, I am not quite sure why. Sometimes, when I turn off the light, I wait for the creak. And in that gap where his footsteps used to be I understand, too late, that they were company as well.