doors (and neighbors)

We don't know any of our neighbors. Even when I pass them in the narrow hallway and mumble hello they pretend I am not there, or that I am talking to some ghost far behind them. Their faces are familiar. I know one has a loud little dog. Another wears a big black coat. Another smokes in the stairwell in an old robe and slippers as a cold wind slips between the panes, looking out at the empty playground downstairs that is taped off.

I can smell their food. Burnt onions. Sour cans of oily fish. Cabbage in a giant imaginary pot. There are takeout boxes that lean against the wall outside their door, greasy with pizza stains and moldy crust. They sit there forever as if they expect someone else to get rid of them. Outside their door, nothing matters. I have grown a habit of nudging the boxes and bags of garbage directly in the door's path, so they must step over it as a sort of petty revenge. This is what we have been reduced to, childish acts while we wait for news, while we wait for the groceries to be delivered in sagging boxes, while we watch the numbers grow, and the trees bend hard in a wind that is more Winter than Spring.

It used to be a sound that I took for granted, that sound of keys in the door as my wife came home, or the sound of V shouting in the hallway and that gentle rush of air as I crack the door open to them, all smiles and attitude, muddy boots and a thousand stories to tell about what they saw outside. Now the door barely opens. Last week I lost my keys somewhere in the house and did not even need them. They were at the bottom of my coat pocket, hiding like everyone else.