Before you're home, you're in the building, which may or may not be where your heart is. Sometimes the paint in the hallway is peeling, or the unseen lives of your neighbors produce unsavory smells. The door is heavy steel with smudged glass and a surly lock.

The mailboxes may shine your own face back to you, capturing the very moment you receive an unpayable bill or the mail of strangers who used to live where you do now. Occasionally, mailbox doors rust shut or drunkenly lurch on hinges.

You realize that you are a transient, like every other person contained within the building. You all make up its smell, its sounds, the litter - visible and invisible - that swims on every stair and threshold.

You will never know any of these people, yet this is home. Almost.