Cataloguing the house hums like diplomatic cables

I've started making an inventory of the sounds in this house since she left — the fridge's 3am groan, the water heater's clank, the way the attic settles after rain. Numbered entries, filed chronologically, complete with dates and notes in the margins. It's the most disciplined I've been in years, and I'm starting to suspect that's exactly the problem: I'm drafting cables to a country that no longer has a government.