The weight of a stranger’s living room

I cleaned one today—small flat, west-facing windows, faint smell of lavender and old paper. The sofa had a dent where someone sat every night for years. I wiped the coffee table, but didn’t touch the book on top: The Complete Works of Rilke, spine cracked, pages yellowed. Didn’t know if it was read or just kept. Sometimes you clean what people leave behind, and you start wondering who they were when they weren’t being seen.