Part 1
Where it has stopped, but hasn’t ended.
She made her roots in the bedrock of millennia, the city eroding and rebuilding around her.
Both tree and weed, water and seed, sun and soil.
Buildings raised and razed, lifted and laid waste.
She knows the names of the new ones.
She watches them carve their hopes into Lark Street pavement, their laughter into the ancestral brownstones, their longing into the stained glass and steel.
She hums their music under her breath.
She keeps their promises tucked in oriel windows, lipstick-smeared glasses, confessional booths, unsent texts and bedside diaries.
She hides your secrets in her walls, tucked like Dutch portraits in City Hall—there, but only seen if sought.
She eavesdrops, the moon with her eyes half-lidded, listening with her.
She’ll never tell.
But she might put her lips to your ear and speak—a mirror, your voice memo, your diary.
Listen to her.
Her towers are geometric sentries, humming like tuning forks against a Hudson River sky.
Their texture presses into you like fingerprints.
Feeling you hum beneath the skin—a pulse.
A breath.
A new day.
If this novel had a final breath of song, this would be it.