the coffee doesn’t help. Hot milk keeps it hotter, milkless as I am the cup is cold too-quick inside my cupped hands. You can blow breath at ten. But I don’t warrant the rads, I drag out an oil heater I got for the builders, when the walls were down and the snow set on the insulation blocks. That gets it up to 16. I can hold out until the house rads come on in the late afternoon. And then I have to fight for the 20 degree buffer as the night comes down, shutting doors and closing curtains. They say it’ll snow hard tonight, but it gets warmer then. It’s coldest with the clear skies when you can count the hour on one hand, I can see the stars out and the airships blinking as they cross the cloth, not a murmur of wind, no traffic hum or yelp of life. Under the press of the boundless void. Scanning for ancient light.
