She came in a coat too thin for the wind—

said it tasted like rust. He laughed,

said it wasn’t the taste of the wind

but the city bleeding through her.

Her camera clicked like insects,

sharp, sudden, unnecessary.

He walked beside her,

hands in his pockets,

his silhouette the quiet echo of buildings

she tried to capture

but couldn’t.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

Her tongue like a foreign coin.

“Depends,” he said,

his voice loose,

like a shirt missing buttons.

“On what?”

“On where you think here is.”

They stood still—

her lenses pointing up,

his eyes burning at the ground.

She collected the beauty of everything

he had forgotten to see:

the cracks in the pavement

where weeds dared to live,

the graffiti soft with rain.

He noticed her noticing,

as if for the first time

hearing someone name a ghost

he had carried so long

it became furniture.

She told him about her city,

one with too many stars and not enough shadows.

He told her about his,

a place so used to losing

it forgot how to stop.

Her stories unraveled

like ribbon;

his were frayed rope.

But somehow the knots held—

in the spaces between her laughter

and his silence,

in the way their steps began

to fall into rhythm

without either noticing.

Later, when the streetlights flickered

like apologies,

he showed her a corner no guidebook knew.

A small door covered in flyers,

a room inside

where a piano breathed like it wanted to drown.

He didn’t tell her it used to be his mother’s place.

He didn’t tell her how the music

felt like stitching over a wound

that never quite healed.

She didn’t ask.

She only listened.

And for once,

he wasn’t alone in the song.

When she left,

she didn’t say goodbye.

The word felt too heavy

for something so delicate.

But she pressed her camera into his hands

and said,

“Keep it.

You see things I don’t.”

And when she was gone,

he walked the city,

alone again—

except this time,

everything looked

like a picture.