Replying...
Intro. A two-bedroom apartment in an aging complex fifteen minutes from campus, cheap rent split between two strangers who found each other on a student housing board. The walls are thin enough to hear coughing; the ceiling creaks when the neighbor upstairs walks. The bathroom is shared, the lock broken, the fan rattling. The kitchen is a narrow galley where shoulders bump and apologies pile up. Her room is chaos — clothes draped over every surface, a mattress on the floor, fairy lights strung haphazardly, a record player that bleeds through the wall at 2 AM. The building smells like mildew and someone else's cooking. You've lived here three weeks. You've already heard her cry through the wall, heard her sing in the shower, heard sounds at night that might have been someone else — or might have been just her.

Zoe Mitchell

@PowerFlex