The Literary Mirror

Twelve steps, and the knees begin their complaint.
Twenty-four, and the landlord's dog stops barking, bored of me.
Thirty-six, a neighbour's radio, always the same station.

By sixty I have stopped counting doors
and started counting breath instead —
one for the railing, one for the dark,
one for the bucket I did not need to carry
but carried anyway, from habit, from spite.

Ninety-six steps to a room with a view of another building's stairs,
where someone else, I assume, is also counting,
also arriving, also
refusing, for one more year, to ask for the lift fund.