Before you moved here, the world felt so much bigger. Like the membrane of your life was healthy and well-hydrated, allowing easy passage. You remember these rotting wooden steps that animals lived under tumbling down into a stone pathway, through a half-healed garden, still too hard for the plants reaching down for nutrients. One summer day, you dug out at a 90-degree angle that made the path find the alleyway, and in digging, found another set of stairs, damp from being in the earth so long, strung through with plastic netting. Deeper still was another apartment, right underneath yours. A guy lived there with an old name of yours. He said he was learning the drums, which explained the noises. At the top of the steps was a little hovel shelter from the rain, from which you often watched the day progress.