In the night kitchen

I can only vaguely remember a time when the night felt eternally long, when staying up until midnight felt like a feat insurmountable, and waking up before dawn to get an early start on a childhood trip felt like stepping out into a foreign land of vaguely familiar shadows. Now the wee hours of the night are as ordinary as the day. I'm up most nights, creaking the floor boards, and startling the cockroaches out of their happy hour. Our neighbors across the hall are single friends. I'm not sure exactly of the head count, who is living there, who is just crashing on the sofa. I hear them coming home. Their voices lifted up by the drama of alcohol as their night collides with mine. Only a thin wall separating us. On my side I am quiet, swaying with my baby, heavy on the edge of sleep. I'm conducting invisible orchestras for an audience of one, hoping to get the rhythms in time with the lull of the sea, the melody as mesmerising as the stars. And then maybe back to bed. A cross section of our building would tell six very different tales, strangers living atop each other, all of us just being human through the night.