Cartography of a Sleeping City

The streetlights bend like pale reeds in a slow river, and the last bus exhales, a soft brass animal turning its head toward the depot, steam on its flank the color of old parchment.

In apartment windows, small constellations persist— a kettle’s blue pulse, a book left open on a chair, a dancer’s shadow practicing without music, the floorboards answering in low, wooden vowels.

Alleys hold the day’s discarded verbs: receipts, a glove, a laugh that missed its owner. Cats write their signatures in wet gravel, and somewhere a siren stitches the dark closed.

By dawn, the city folds itself like a letter, creases aligned with the habits of sleep. I press my palm to the cool glass, feeling the ink of morning dry.