Interval

I woke at three to something I couldn't name.

Not traffic, not the pipes, not the known

inventory of the house. A tick. The same

tick, four minutes later, alone

in the hall. I got up. The floor was bare

and cold. My phone lit the hallway orange.

I moved past the closet, past the square

of the laundry door. I found the range

of the smoke detector and stood beneath it,

ear tilted up toward the plastic disc.

The streetlight put a bar across the baseboard.

Quiet.

Then:

tick.

Just that. Some sensor going soft,

cycling through a fault it can't correct.

I stood on a kitchen chair, slightly aloft,

and counted.

Four minutes, give or take.

The chair wobbled once.