You said you’d only be a minute. I believed the kind of minute that stretches. So I left the hallway light on and went back to what I was doing. Mostly. There’s a particular quiet a house makes when it expects someone. Pipes. Fridge. A car outside that isn’t yours. I know all of them now. I made tea. Forgot it. Made another. The first one went cold beside the window. The second one too. That felt excessive. Keep the light on. Not for any reason. Keep the light on. At some point waiting becomes just being awake. At some point being awake becomes morning. At some point you stop checking. Not dramatically. You simply don’t. People think absence has a sound. It doesn’t. It borrows everything else. The radiator. The rain. The lift downstairs. A footstep that belongs to somebody on the wrong floor. Keep the light on. I like the room this way. Keep the light on. That’s all. In the morning I switch it off without thinking.
