Months ago I made an arrangement with my neighbor. Whenever he wants to smoke a cigarette, which he always does out the open window in his living room, he knocks twice on our shared wall. That way I know to close the window in my living room, which is less than ten feet from his. It’s been a successful fix. I’ve even come to welcome the knocks, short transmissions that they are, and the invitation to a world beyond my desk, not to mention the reminder to get up and stretch my legs.

Sometimes he knocks and my window is already closed, but I still stand and cross to it before remembering. There are other times, I imagine, that he knocks and I’m not home. I like to think he knocks elsewhere, that he smiles to himself when, after opening a window in a friend’s kitchen, he taps his knuckles against the wall. I, meanwhile, have on multiple occasions walked directly to my window when a visitor has knocked on my door.

We don’t speak, my neighbor and I, but I’m surrounded by his sound, embraced by it, all of life’s usual clatter newly wrapped around his reference — a car door slammed, footsteps in the hall, the rolling thunder of furniture moving in or out.

Then, about a week ago, the knocks stopped. I don’t know exactly when. I don’t know how long I sat there assuming I was between the knocks when really it was after, and I was already here. It’s a bizarre and inescapable loss. From the outside my life is the same. A day with a half-dozen knocks is so close to the same day without them, but now my silence has no shape.

I’ve yet to properly investigate. There are only a few likely explanations, and I’m ashamed they’ve all affected me the same.

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