A Silence Built in Layers

The city holds its breath, a collective exhale turning white. Each flake is a decimal point in a long, cold calculation of quiet.

Tires no longer bite the asphalt; they glide on a skin of feathers. The orange hum of streetlamps is softened, a bruised glow caught in a web of falling lace.

Iron fire escapes are cushioned, heavy with the weight of nothing. Everything sharp has been blunted, the edges of the world smoothed into the curve of a closed eye.

We are ghosts in our own rooms, watching the map of the familiar get rewritten by a steady, indifferent hand.