Before she moved here someone told her that the city was built over a lake. She imagined air alive with moisture; reeds shifting with the sough of wind; and everywhere the mystery of water. 

            But the lakes of the city have been drained. 

            In their place, structures of brick and steel have been built and, even now, cranes loom over the last river, lining it with skyscrapers. She lives in one of these and every day she looks at its rectangular grey bulk. Lately she's noticed there's a lean to it, a curve on the left hand side.  

            She looks again. Yes. Very faint. The merest inclination, a bend, a turning towards the river and the sun's reflection off the water. She glances around the bus to see if anyone else has noticed but they're looking at screens or tending to cereal-grazing children as they hurtle towards day care. 

            That winter great white birds drop down out of the trees that stand between her bus stop and the school. They scratch up the air with their keening. Behind them the bulk of the apartment building bends more fiercely. The morning sun glints off its curved surface. Soon it'll bend too low to cast a shadow towards the bus stop. The mud rising from the storm water drains will be the only dark thing on the road. 

            At dinnertime she stands at the end of the bench so as to stop her pasta bowl from sliding off. In the mornings she catches the early bus, eager to be away from the building, where her furniture huddles at the bottom of a steep incline that she must crawl up if she wants to relieve herself in the night. 

           On the bus she watches the white birds dropping out of the trees by the school. From this distance the building looks bent over, like a bridge, as if it was never meant to house people. It keels away from the city, like an abstraction that no one understands.

            One Thursday night she stands amidst the chaos of her apartment dropping frozen peas on the floor for the neighbour's dog, who slides after them. Her neighbour is packing. He'll box up his life and his dog and go to parents or friends, to someone on the other side of the river. They'll all leave eventually. The school will close, and someone will souvenir its signage. No one will be left to create new parks or nature walkways beside the expanding river with its sheets of glistening mud, though there will be talk of such things. Instead, the school will stand derelict, its windows boarded over, beside cracking netball courts and a muddy oval head high in caster-oil plant and weeds.

            One day she will look back just in time to see the apartment building lean over and slide into the river. She will message her boss that she won't be coming in. She will watch the waves rise, lithe and viscous, as the angles of the building slip away.