Instructions for the Buried River

Under the avenue, a river keeps its silver grammar, speaking through grates in a breath of iron rain. Night buses pass above like matches struck and spent, and still it combs the dark with patient hands.

It remembers the meadow that once unbuttoned here, milkweed lanterns, the slow republic of frogs. Now its back is bridled by brick and cable, yet moonlight finds it in the seams and kneels.

Listen: every pipe in the sleeping buildings leans an ear toward that underground hymn. In the boiler rooms, warm valves bloom with rust, small orange roses opening to the damp.

By dawn the baker unlocks his blue-lit shop, flour lifting white as weather around his wrists. Beneath his floorboards the hidden current turns, carrying the whole city like a thought it cannot lose.