Concerning the Apartment

  Sounds of tenement. Somewhere in the building a wailing baby, cutting through the drone of phlegmatic ludicrousness of day-time TV talk shows. He let the door click closed, waiting on the threshold of more than a soured doormat, listening to a woman trying to hush the child, breathing in the stale must and searing Mexican spice, the actinic ammonia of cat urine, the old garbage and city air slithering through cracked windows.
  Then he took the wooden stairs, through the front door and into a another world hallowed by raindrops, and sodden leaves, and fallen insects.