Cartography of an Unmade City

I walk a city the way a hand reads a face, block by block, the skin of streets warming under noon. Sidewalks are thin rivers of quartz, carrying footprints downstream into nowhere.

In the vacant lot, weeds keep their own census, spines of thistle and a moth’s hush at the fence. A bulldozer sleeps, jaw open, dreaming in rust, its breath a little engine of dust.

I mark the bakery that isn’t there anymore, the window where my name once fogged the glass. There is a seam in the air where the bell should ring— a quiet that tastes like flour and rain.

Evening enters with a pocketful of coins. The streetlights learn our names, one by one, spilling a pale gold that does not belong to any map. I fold the paper city, and it folds me back.