Space heater

In the morning I wake up and I feel the cold on my face. The tip of my nose. The tops of my ears. My apartment is cold. Built in 1904, according to our fire safety manual, there is no central heat. Instead, we have small fireplaces that have electric inserts. When you flip a switch, the fireplace shudders to life and begins to weakly emit heat. Mine has broken. I am not keen on inviting someone from building maintenance into my room while I try to teach, and so I am making do with a small space heater. The New York City winter has not been so bad, but still, the mornings are cold.

I very slowly slide out from underneath the covers, trying to let as little of my body touch the air as possible. Quickly, quickly I pull my English wool socks over my bony feet. I push them into slippers. I pull a sweater that I tossed onto the ground the night before on, and shudder against its coldness. Moving swiftly, I step around my bed and flip on my space heater, full heat, and walk through my room and to the kitchen, flipping on lights and turning on the fireplace in the living room as I go.

I like to think of myself as a woman from another time. Stoking my own twenty-first century fire in the mornings. Making myself coffee in order to warm up. Setting the kettle on to boil. Watching the sun rise up over the tops of my neighboring buildings.