Downstairs a batch of sheets is rolling and tangling in the dryer. Upstairs I am putting away clean dishes and making coffee and trying to figure out why only a few of the registers are shooting out hot air. It's a cold dark Monday morning.

Glancing up across the driveway, I can see into my neighbor's lit apartment window: red India-print cloth tacked up against a white wall; a hump of clothing hung over the corner of a closet door. For all I know she is looking down through my naked windows at me, wrapped in my red robe, typing away. Neither of us seems too concerned about curtains.

Flowers are blooming bravely inside the house, but the shadows are hiding the frost-damage outside. The season is dying. Yet later, when the sun rises, clouds will swirl against blue; the breeze will tug at the roots of my hair. It will all feel like life.