Before the City Wakes

The streets are still blue-black, only the baker's light pooling gold across wet pavement. A single car, headlights cutting fog.

Even the pigeons sleep, wings folded into invisible nests, dreaming of breadcrumbs and wire, the small violences of day not yet begun.

The traffic lights blink red, green, red— a metronome for no one, while somewhere a window opens, someone reaches for coffee, the world tilting toward sound.

In this hush, we could be anywhere: a city of steam and waiting, a held breath before the plunge, when silence still tastes like possibility.