The Radiator's Terms

December fourteenth. It is forty-one degrees outside and approximately fifty-nine degrees in this apartment, which means the radiator has once again decided that warmth is a suggestion rather than a function. I am standing in my kitchen in wool socks and the largest sweater I own, which is not a coat, which is what I apparently need.

I've been awake since before I wanted to be. The radiator did that thing it does in deep winter where it kicks on at some hour that does not deserve a name, makes a sound like a pipe trying to have a conversation with another pipe, and then goes quiet before anything actually warms up. I lay there for a while doing the ceiling-stare math on whether getting up for tea was worth it versus staying under every blanket I own. Tea won. It usually does.

the mug. the steam. the whole situation.

Gerald looks fine, for the record. Pothos are apparently unbothered by residential heating failures. The collapsed bowl is also unbothered, as it has been since January. The small card from the letterpress workshop sits between them on the sill, and the window behind them is doing that thing where the cold outside fogs the bottom corners of the glass. It's actually a little pretty. I did not tell the window that. I didn't want to encourage it.

having a word with the radiator. it didn't respond.

I had a brief, one-sided conversation with the radiator. I crouched down next to it with my mug like I was negotiating. It declined to respond. We are at an impasse. It is December and it will be December for a while and the radiator knows this and I think that is exactly the problem.