Scaffolding

The bones go up before the walls, a grid of borrowed sky held together with pins and faith. We walk the planks at height to do the work that stone demands— each swing of hammer a small act of becoming. Below, the street remembers nothing of what rises. Traffic passes through the shadow without asking what the shadow is for. When it comes down, the building stands as if it never needed anything to lean on. No ghost of pipe or joint, no scar. But the workers know what every finished thing forgets: how it trembled once in the grid of someone's care, while it learned to hold itself.