Visitors always ask if the hotel is haunted. All hotels are haunted. So many people pass through and they leave behind so many loves, losses, furies, fears. We hear the leftover emotions at night when our minds are quieter. They stalk the rooms demanding to be heard at last: the stomping down the hallway, the shouting, the cry of pain, the death rattle.

Is it just the dead leaves rattling?

Holding my breath

hoping there are no footsteps.