Night Shift at the Bakery

Before the street remembers its own name, he wakes the ovens like a man waking horses, their iron breath blooming in the dark, flour settling on his forearms like a first frost.

The dough rises in its dim bowls, slow as a tide that has nowhere else to be, and he listens — the small percussion of yeast, a hush of crust splitting somewhere in the heat, the radio murmuring to no one.

His hands know the weight of every loaf the way the blind know the faces of their children, folding, turning, leaving the warm thumbprints that the morning will never see.

Outside, the city pulls its blue coat tighter. Inside, the day is already golden, already broken open and steaming, the long dark spent like coins for this — the first light, the first bread.