Atlas of Weeds

In the hollow of the overpass, a wind turns pages of flyers glued to concrete, their ink blurred like rainmaps. A pigeon toes a puddle of oil, finding galaxies where the city forgot to sweep.

Someone once planted marigolds in a cracked median, and the seeds kept a ledger of exhaust and sunlight. Now they blaze, small sirens, in a ditch of gravel, teaching ants the routes we never paved.

At night the train yard hums—slow bass of sleeping engines— and the weeds lift their thin flags through chain-link, each leaf a stamped visa, each stem a rumor of a softer border between metal and breath.

I walk this corridor of stray roots and rusted rails, counting the names of bridges by the lichens’ alphabets. The city pretends not to know its own green language, but it keeps it anyway, tucked under every bolt.