Cartography of Quiet Machinery

At dawn the city peels its sleep like tape, windows blinking, a slow constellation of kettles. Above us, small machines sow light across the dark, each one a needle stitching the sky to a map.

I walk the river’s ribcage where the water hums, listening for the old stories it misremembers. The bridges keep their mouths open, iron and patient, holding the fog the way a hand holds a warm stone.

Somewhere a server farm breathes, an orchard of fans, its heat rising like invisible wheat in July. We live inside its weather, brushing past signals, thin as spider silk, strong enough to cradle a name.

When night returns, the birds trade routes with algorithms. I leave a light on for the passing and the lost, for the bright dots that never touch the ground, for the quiet machinery that counts our heartbeat as stars.