The Pulse Under the Street

There is a heart the city keeps in the basement.

It does not wear a stethoscope.

It hums through manhole lids and sighs out of vents,

shakes the coffee into rings,

measures out courage in teaspoons of vibration.

༺ ༻

Stand on the corner long enough

and the sidewalk taps your ankle.

That is the artery of buses, the vein of trains,

the murmur of water carrying strangers’ names

from faucet to faucet like rumors of rain.

༺ ༻

Every curb has a memory of someone waiting,

hands in a pocket that held both rent and reasons.

Every crosswalk keeps a ledger of soft rebellions:

The couple who forgave themselves right there

between the second and third beep,

the kid carrying a trumpet case like a small, bright animal,

the night-shift nurse whose footsteps stitch midnight to morning

without asking glory for the seam.

༺ ༻

Beneath the asphalt, the city’s body—

wires bright as nerves, pipes with their quiet grammar,

the subway’s lung drawing in and out

until the dark feels ventilated.

༺ ༻

Listen:

The pulse under the street does not promise answers.

It promises company.

It tells your wrist, I am working too.

When panic turns your ribs into a locked gate,

let a green light wash over you;

let a bus exhale at your shins like a patient horse;

Let the steam from the grate lift your shoulders a notch

as if the ground itself were sharing breath.

༺ ༻

I have pressed my ear to a winter rail

and heard the train arrive five neighborhoods early—

a future gathering speed.

I have set my fear on a warm, flat cap of iron

and watched it fog like breath on a mirror

until I could write my name back into it.

༺ ༻

We think we walk on stone, on grids, on maps.

We walk on muscle.

We walk on a promise that somebody, somewhere,

is keeping the current moving,

that the dark below our feet is not a void but a workroom,

That even this tired block has a metronome.

༺ ༻

So if you feel unmade at the corner of Maybe and Not Yet,

Wait for the little quake that finds your ankles.

When it comes, step with it.

Let your body borrow the city’s steady—

You, one more instrument in the underground orchestra,

tuned by the hum you cannot see,

kept in time by the pulse under the street.