Kilns of the Evening Grid

The river is a long cable laid under dusk, its current humming with the day's leftover voltage, birds cross like brief sparks, and the city lifts its sockets to the sky.

I walk past transformer boxes warm as loaves, their paint scabbed with old numbers and rain. Inside, a small storm turns itself obedient, spinning copper into a quiet orange breath.

Across the avenue, the laundromat windows glow, a chorus of machines turning water into weather. Steam gathers in the lint of the air, and a child draws a spiral on the fogged glass.

Night settles like a blanket of circuits, the streetlights reading to the asphalt. Somewhere a house inhales, the fridge clicks on, and the grid remembers, in its own way, our names.