The Door Closes and Nothing Shifts
The first night, you lie in a bed that smells like someone else's linen decisions and listen to the house breathe. It has a rhythm. Pipes that knock at 2 a.m. A light switch in the wrong place. A pressure cooker that whistles twice before the third long hiss. The family knows all of it without knowing they know it. You are the only one in the building who has to learn it consciously, the way you learn a foreign language, by making mistakes in front of people who are too polite to correct you.
