Sitting in a quiet room and hearing the radiators click and hiss when they kick on like a little babbling baby. The satisfying thwump that a book makes after you finish reading it, looking all around and seeing how the molecules in the air are charged differently, the utter satisfaction of sliding it in its little plastic jacket into the book return drop at the public library, imagining the book enjoying the little metal slide ride it gets to go on, imagining somebody else sometime later picking the book up and enjoying it and having their little portion of air molecules charged up, too. How the cast iron pan so happily and greedily slurps up the olive oil when you season it after dinner. Noticing suddenly that various house plants have grown, the amaryllis is an inch taller than it was yesterday, knowing that they are breathing your air and you are breathing theirs and when you do your little exercises in the living room and fog up the windows with your body heat they are lovingly accepting all the carbon dioxide you push out with each pushup. Running the vacuum over a portion of floor sprinkled with dirt or road salt and hearing it crackle, hearing the little particles knock against the stretchy walls of the tube as they travel into the chamber. Going to make yourself a cup of mint tea and as you go to grab the kettle realizing that your partner has just made themselves a cup of herbal tea and there is enough hot water still left over for you, more than can fit in your cup, in fact your cup runneth over. Or else standing by the kettle as you wait for it to heat up and reading for the one thousandth time everything you currently have stuck to your fridge with the little fruit and food magnets you bought at the San Gennaro feast in the late summer of 2019 (one in the shape of bananas, one in the shape of paella), the old save-the-dates and a halloween card from your niece that came in an envelope filled with bat-shaped confetti that all flew out when you opened the card so for weeks you'd find purple and orange bats all over the apartment. Sitting quietly and hearing your partner come through the back door, up the stairs, and up to the apartment door where she will jiggle her keys in the exact same way every time looking for the one that opens the door, that moment of anticipation where you wait for the door to creak ajar. How it feels like actual magic when the thing you ordered online over a month ago finally makes it to your doorstep and slips through the mail slot. Drawing out a record from the big shelf of LPs and feeling the smooth plastic of the poly bag sliding gently between the other records, the heft of it, the satisfaction of the spindle in the middle of the turntable accepting the little hole, the record flattening against the slip mat, the needle gently dropping and doing its ginger little mini ballet over the bumps and grooves of the music, sound which is physically locked into the plastic, and then, by some miracle, the recording coming to life and leaping from the stereo, filling the room in which you sit with blasted kick drums and wiggly little synthesizers. Lighting a sprig of cedar and watching the green needles curl up orange in the flame, watching the black smoke rise deliciously toward the heaven of your ceiling. The faint smell of fake flowers wafting out from the sheets after they've been washed in the washing machine and dried in the dryer and snugly tucked back on to the bed. Turning all the lights off in the living room one by one as you head off to sleep for the night and hearing the dishwasher continuing to gargle and slosh as you pass by the now-dark kitchen on the way to the bedroom, how reassuring those watery sounds are, and how the mug you use every morning will be clean when you awake. How the projector you watch TV with almost every single night now whirrs and overheats every time you use it, so much so that it acts like a little space heater as it sits on the glass coffee table, fanning out hot air that cocoons you in a bubble of content. How almost every episode of Star Trek wraps up so nicely and neatly by the end, some digestible and laughably clean resolution that never fails to lull you to sleep. How you have to position the radio just so in its spot near the radiator, how the shower curtain lightly muffles the voices of the panelists on the local affairs roundtable when you take your midmorning shower, how closely the sensation of hearing them talk through the shower curtain reminds you of being upstairs while your mom and her church friends played bunco downstairs - you hear the voices, you hear the conversation, but the words are obscured. How fresh and bracing the winter air is every single time you step out the front door, how it always catches you a little by surprise and seems to instantly vaporize those mounting anxieties you get from sitting in front of a computer. How taking a little walk every day is so vital to your well-being. How when you take your little walks you imagine that there are goblins and frankensteins and horrible ghoulies coming toward you and they're all wearing t-shirts printed in big block text with things like HOPELESSNESS and SCARED A LOT and FRIENDS ARE MAD AT YOU but you have a blowtorch that's labeled TAKING A WALK and the terrible monsters burst into totally harmless ash with just the faintest lick of flame, you destroy them all, in fact they turn into purple and orange bat-shaped confetti.