T72 Number 583

t72 hums under a sky of copper glass, its belly numbered 583 like a secret kept between bolts. It remembers the slow arithmetic of mornings — gears counting out the hush, pistons filing away old storms — and how rain once learned to sleep on its metal ribs.

Passengers come and go like commas, their pockets full of small unfinished sentences. A child traces the digits with a finger: 5 — a cliff; 8 — an infinity swallowed by rust; 3 — a wound healed with silver paint. The conductor nods, a quiet moon of certainty, and the timetable folds itself into the crease of evening. t72 number 583

A draft of a short prose-poem: