The Copper Hour

The sun snags on the serrated skyline, bleeding amber into the narrow glass canyons. A slow arson of day, consuming the shadows before the streetlamps spark their pale, humming bloom.

Traffic is a river of molten rubies and pearls, humming a low, industrial prayer to the grid. The air smells of ozone and cooling asphalt, thick with the collective exhale of a million lungs.

Windows ignite, one by one, like distant stars caught in the honeycomb of steel and brick. Each a quiet stage, a frame for a solitary life, folding into the indigo velvet of the coming night.