Afterimage Weather

The morning lifts its wet curtain, streetlamps still humming in puddles. Copper wires hang like slow harps, and every gutter keeps a small sky.

A dish on the hill turns its quiet face, listening for the last blue static of rain. Clouds unwind like tape from a spool, leaving a hiss where the thunder was.

Buses exhale, the doors clap shut, steam rises from coats and asphalt. The city retunes itself by footsteps, a long vowel the bridges hold.

I walk with a paper cup of heat, its steam a brief geography in my hands. The light moves forward, rinsed and new, and I try to hear what it says.