Cartography of Rainlight

A city folds its umbrellas like tired birds, streetlamps tasting the dusk with their small amber tongues, and the river writes a blurred signature across the slate of the evening.

I walk where the pavement keeps its secrets warm, steam rising from grates like breath from old stories, each puddle a shallow mirror holding a different sky.

On the bridge, rainlight flickers in the cables, thin as a violin’s last note, and the wind hums through steel ribs, a lullaby for awake windows.

By midnight the storm is a hand releasing, palms open, empty and shining, and the city, rinsed to its bones, listens for the first clean thought.