The Pavement's Fever

I press my face to the wet pavement and the fever answers— I inhale the concrete's mineral ghost, copper-salt exhalation rising from the rain, I am burning from inside and the stone is burning from below, I cannot tell where the heat ends and I begin.

I taste concrete flour dissolving on my tongue, I feel the pavement's pores opening like skin, exhaling trapped copper and dust, I swallow the street's wet breath and it becomes my fever, I am no longer separate from the stone.

I could dissolve into this morning entirely, I could become the oxidation itself, copper spreading across wet stone, I am breathing the hardened earth and the earth is breathing back into me.