Moss on the Median

At dawn the traffic lights blink like tired metronomes, and in the concrete wedge between lanes a seam of moss drinks last night’s rain, green as a whisper no engine can translate.

Commuters pass with coffee heat in paper cups, phones bright as pocket aquariums, while sparrows stitch their quick black signatures through steam lifting from a sewer grate.

A maintenance worker kneels, gloved hands gentle, sets marigolds where oil once rainbowed, and the median holds that small fire of petals like a lantern cupped against wind.

By evening, brake lights redden the wet asphalt, the flowers keep breathing in the noise, and the city, huge and iron-throated, learns one soft syllable: grow.