Weather of Glass

The morning peels the city like an orange, segments of light loosening from high windows. A bus exhales, a warm animal in metal skin, and the street carries its pulse toward the river.

In a shop of glass I watch my face pass through me, layered over mannequins and hanging raincoats. Each reflection is a different weather, drizzle, hard sun, a slow, private fog.

A sparrow drags a thread of bread across the curb, stitching the day into something that will hold. I follow the stitch, past puddles that rehearse the sky, past a boy who draws a door on the sidewalk and enters.

By afternoon, the city is a bowl of bells, rung by footsteps and the slant of construction cranes. I take the sound home in my pocket, coins of air that ring when I breathe.