Alarm for breakfast: The cold house

W hen I come back home and everything inside looks the same as it does outside: full of snow, with white fog and bluish light, that’s what I imagined in the subway on the way there. Pigeons peck something from my table, maybe other animals crawl under furniture, like in the new Rosalía video for the song “Berghain”. I felt sorry for leaving my home as if it were a human being in need, as if I were still there, curled up for warmth. But I saw no other option.

“You’ll never get warm again,” said my neighbor with wide eyes when I met her downstairs on my escape and told her about it – that day it felt like minus 15 degrees.

The day started as a normal Monday morning: I had freshly showered, had a glass of yogurt in my hand and finally had many hours in a row to write. When the carbon monoxide alarm started beeping, I opened all the windows and ran out of the house. Maybe because of the shock, I didn’t call anyone. I tried to carry on with my day normally, as if nothing had happened. I went to the library to continue working, ate lentil soup and later went to the dance class in Kreuzberg. Afterwards, I briefly thought about sleeping somewhere else, but the memory of my neighbor’s words convinced me to confront reality.

When I entered the apartment it was quiet. There was no snow and no animals, but it was freezing cold. I slept under every blanket I owned and felt like I was lying in a tent in Siberia. With the room window still open, I was no longer afraid of dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, and as day dawned I was woken up by the sound of trash cans being carried and the smell of coffee from another apartment. Shivering from the cold but happy to have survived, I made one for myself.