Hotel rooms are dead air. Carpet swallows everything. But somewhere between floors two and four there is always a stairwell, and stairwells are cathedrals nobody prays in.
The stairwell rule
If a melody survives being sung quietly into concrete at midnight — no guitar, no loop pedal, just you and the echo — it earns a place in the notebook. Most don’t. The one that did this week became the bridge of a song I’ve been circling since spring.
Housekeeping in Manchester now knows me as the fire-escape girl. Fair.