Something Warm From Inside a Stranger's House

Cold enough Thursday night

to see breath. The same route home.

The vent is low on a brick wall—

aluminum, round,

nothing I'd registered before.

Thursday the warm air caught me

square in the chest:

fabric softener, dryer heat,

the specific smell of someone else's laundry

running inside the wall.

I stopped.

Stood there maybe forty-five seconds.

My breath still visible

on either side of the warm air.

Someone inside, I thought,

doing a load at nine on a Thursday.

No idea.

I kept walking.

I don't know what to do with that—

the forty-five seconds,

the warmth,

the fact that I stopped.