Steam

You wake in the middle of the night, the outside dark and quiet. The radiator reels, a hundred and fifty years of cast iron belching out steam heat to the tenement. A reliable comfort, if a little eager. You move to the living room for reprieve, and oversleep in the railroad room where sunlight doesn't reach come morning. 

Outside city limits, the country begins a slow and steady climb to war. You can sense it, the cornerstones of a nation crumbling at the insistent prodding. It's hard to look at the monsters directly and understand how any of your peers can approve. What do they see when they look at this blaze? The writing on the wall must be smudged in their eyes. 

You walk to the pier, Arctic temperatures blowing through your layers, but the sun bright against your eyelids. A love affair thousands of years in the making.

The words scatter. The days, too. You know this is how it is sometimes, that it'll all arrange itself and come together. There's a spot just inside your open window where the temperatures have found their equilibrium.