Reservoir Atlas

At dawn the emptied basin keeps the shape of water. Apartment blocks rise where carp once turned silver in silt. Cranes swing slowly, like herons relearning their knees. Wind combs the rebar and pulls a low, cello hum.

Children chalk constellations on the sloped concrete wall, each star a promise nailed to last summer's tide mark. Moss in the spillway glows like old velvet. Someone plants tomatoes in a cracked floodgate.

At night, kitchen windows float in tiers of amber, a new shoreline stitched from laundry and radio static. The moon rehearses itself in puddles of rain, and every stairwell smells of iron, basil, raincoats.

We carry buckets up from the communal tap, listening for the vanished lake beneath our footsteps. It answers in pipes, in kettles, in the throat of sleep: a deep, patient music, teaching stone how to remember.