I let my eyelids drift apart and tried to make sense of the ceiling. It
wasn't a ceiling in my house. It wasn't a ceiling I knew. The yellow light
came from a pearl bulb thick with dust and dead insects, dim from endless
use, the plaster above it stained to a fine brown film where bulbs before
had blown. There were cracks in the ceiling, odd shapes and plateaux behind
the rough, dirty paint. It wasn't a ceiling I knew.
