Chicken noodle soup

There’s a woman that lives on the ground floor of my building.

She decorates the fence beside the garbage cans for Halloween.

She hung Christmas lights in the rotting stairwell.

It doesn’t get rid of the stench of cigarettes, and it doesn’t make up for the crazy woman on my floor that bangs on the walls and screams at us from outside of our doors.

It doesn’t make up for my landlord that told me she was just having a bad day.

But it’s something,

And sometimes the hallways smell like chicken noodle soup and popcorn.

And sometimes I hear people laughing from their open windows.

And the Christmas lights in the stairway make it look less daunting.