A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

From the table I hear children, young children. Not a pair of children -- the first plural of "child" -- but a few, what our teacher once told us (when I was a child) meant "three to five."

The voices of children -- some high and melodious, others rough and husky. I cannot see them but I know that their voices are shaped by their motions -- voices that appeared out of nowhere, as if descended from birds.

What has them in motion?

I listen for what I do not hear -- the skid of a soccer ball, an object. But more than likely theirs is an instant game, the kind some of us were good at making up, while others argued over what should be its rules.