The Orchestrations of a Silent Majority

Elevators in the lobby, taking the risk, grocery bags, and how kindness is

It’s a small building, where I live.

Five floors with five apartments each. Between seven and eight years I’ve lived here. People move out all the time, but we’ve stayed. In the lobby, there’s a plaque. A plaque they probably meant to update continuously, but the building management has been bought and rebought so many times I don’t know if anyone has the key to open the glass to change it. While I’m waiting for the elevator, while people load furniture into the small box, I’ll stare at the tiny glass box and think about if it would be better to take the stairs. Or late at night when the last person has come back before the last last person that is me, before the last last last person, I will yawn, eyes watering, and trail the name “Williams” over to the apartment number that we no longer occupy, that we occupied for a year but then moved into the apartment we have now.