Threshold of Light

The city breathes itself awake, cars still sleeping in their rows, when I cross the empty plaza— one shadow moving through many absences.

The streetlamp flickers toward oblivion, pale against the seeping gold. A pigeon drinks from yesterday's spill, indifferent to its own becoming.

I stand at the intersection of names, where the avenue dissolves into vowels, where the light is still negotiating with the dark about who belongs here first.

My hands remember warmth from pockets I've since grown beyond. The city opens its eyes, and I am both the threshold and what crosses through it.