Cartography of Rainlight

At dawn the city opens like wet paper, ink bleeding from street signs into the gutters. A bus exhales at the corner, and the windows carry brief, traveling moons.

Under the overpass, puddles keep a second sky; a gull stitches white thread through the gray. My hands smell of iron rail and oranges, as if distance could be peeled and shared.

Vendors lift their shutters like stage curtains, steam climbs from carts in bright, salted spirals. Someone laughs behind a stack of apricots, and the sound rings bronze against the morning.

By noon the rain thins to a glassy whisper. The sidewalks remember every footstep anyway, small dark prints fading into light, like names spoken once, then carried onward.