It's been raining for 8 days. The cold seems colder and our 180 year-old apartment building feels like it's groaning and sinking into the side of the mountain it sits on. The horn blown by the train that passes across the street sounds lonelier every day. The floorboards shiver. They pull away from one another. Gaps open to let the dust settled between them over the past three seasons breathe. We're broke and refrain from turning the heating on and our lovers refuse to spend their nights here anymore. All of the instruments in our apartment are bowing and twisting, souring their voices, as they perform the prelude, although short of breath and out of tune, to winter's chill blowing down from the north, where the oranges and yellows are all gone and the trees stand bare, with their branches threatening to snap off in a wind too gripping to bend away from. The ground will freeze and the apartment will no longer seem to shift in its place, but its foundation will continue to crack, along with all the streets in our city and the lips on all our faces. The night comes sooner every day, as if trying to tell us, “go back to sleep, it'll be over when you wake”. But it never is; the loneliness is as persistent as the night.

It's been raining for 8 days. The cold seems colder and our 180 year-old apartment building feels like it's groaning and sinking into the side of the mountain it sits on. The horn blown by the train that passes across the street sounds lonelier every day. The floorboards shiver. They pull away from one another. Gaps open to let the dust settled between them over the past three seasons breathe. We're broke and refrain from turning the heating on and our lovers refuse to spend their nights here anymore. All of the instruments in our apartment are bowing and twisting, souring their voices, as they perform the prelude, although short of breath and out of tune, to winter's chill blowing down from the north, where the oranges and yellows are all gone and the trees stand bare, with their branches threatening to snap off in a wind too gripping to bend away from. The ground will freeze and the apartment will no longer seem to shift in its place, but its foundation will continue to crack, along with all the streets in our city and the lips on all our faces. The night comes sooner every day, as if trying to tell us, “go back to sleep, it'll be over when you wake”. But it never is; the loneliness is as persistent as the night.