When the Servers Dream of Birds

The station exhales a thin blue light, metal benches cold as river stones; above, the rafters fill with wings— soft syllables brushing the clock.

A row of servers hums in the back hall, their fans a steady tide, their LEDs a reef; packets of night dissolve into morning, messages carried like seeds in beaks.

Coffee steam rises, a brief weather system; people drift through it, fog-figures, checking their palms for a signal, as if the sky were a long, patient screen.

Out on the tracks, the first train shudders awake, iron skin warming under a pale sun; overhead, the flock turns in one sentence, and the city remembers how to listen.