City at 2 A.M.

At two in the morning
the city removes its makeup.

Billboards continue smiling
for nobody.
Traffic lights change color
to empty intersections.
Office towers glow
with the stubbornness of deadlines.

Somewhere, a delivery rider
carries dinner
to a stranger too tired to cook.
Somewhere, a nurse ties her hair again
and returns to the ward.
Somewhere, a student promises himself
this chapter will be the last.

The streets are quieter
but not asleep.

Windows become biographies.
One holds laughter.
One holds television light.
One holds a man
eating alone over the sink.

I walk beneath flyovers
where pigeons dream
above graffiti prayers.
Even the stray dogs
look like philosophers tonight.

Cities are honest after midnight.
They stop pretending
everyone is thriving.

You can hear exhaustion
in the metro rails,
hope in a taxi meter,
loneliness in elevators
rising too slowly.

And yet—
there is beauty here.

The tea stall steaming
like a small temple.
The newspaper truck arriving
with tomorrow.
The breeze that moves freely
between rich towers and rented rooms.

At two in the morning
the city and I
understand each other best.