City of Kites

Morning unspools its linen over the roofs, steam rises from grates like brief alphabets, and a red kite lifts from a rooftop garden where tomatoes lean toward the unquiet air.

Below, the avenues braille the day with light, buses hum a low brass, pigeons clap, a child in a yellow coat runs a line through traffic as if threading a needle between towers.

The kite learns the city's small turbulence, riding the eddies of bakery heat and river breath, catching the tug of a thousand windows opening— all the apartments exhaling their night.

By dusk, the string is a thin river back home, and the kite, a small flag of weather and will, tilts toward the water where the skyline softens, where every bright thing is briefly doubled.