Threshold

The city breathes before dawn, street lamps guttering their last amber song while darkness still claims the alleyways. A pigeon lands—splash of gray on wet stone, its shadow knife-sharp against the coming light.

Everything suspended in amber, the world between sleep and waking, between the breath you held and the breath you release. A single car passes, tires whispering secrets to the abandoned street.

I am alone here with the stirring, with birds testing their voices like instruments, with the smell of rain-soaked concrete rising, with coffee brewing behind some darkened window. The city is becoming itself again.

This pocket of silence is mine— this threshold moment before the flood returns, before the streets fill with hunger and purpose. I am a ghost in the half-light, breathing the last breath of the night.