Lanterns in the Underleaf

The escalator breathes us down, a long ribcage of steel, into the underleaf where trains graze and sparks are spores. Walls sweat slow moss, each tile a damp lid over old weather. We carry our bright rectangles like rescued moths.

A busker bows a saw; its sound unthreads the air, silver filament in the darkened ducts. Someone laughs, and the tunnel briefly blooms, a small aurora of teeth and steam.

I think of the surface as a patient lake, how it keeps the day suspended, unblinking. Here, nights are stacked like books; you pull one, and the print is warm, the paper living.

The train arrives as if summoned by a tide, doors part: a mouth of light, a salt of voices. We step inside and are ferried by invisible roots, through the soft geology of a city dreaming.