Library of Rain

The rain arrives with a soft clatter of pencils, writing in the gutters, in the bright tin roofs. Streetlights open like apricots, and each puddle is a shallow sky, rehearsing blue.

I walk through the city as if through a library, shelves of windows, spines of doors, borrowed air. A bus sighs past, turning pages of wind, and the river keeps the footnotes in its dark mouth.

Somewhere a kettle calls, thin as a violin, a stairwell smells of oranges and warm concrete. I remember a name I never knew, and it fits the day like a well-worn glove of light.

When the rain thins, the streets keep a quiet sheen, a sentence left unfinished, a thread I can follow. I step between commas of fallen leaves, carrying the city's weather inside my coat.