Sophie Nguyen

The city, cast in sepia hums

beneath the sun’s heat,

streets smudged in

shadow and glare,

a place where every photograph

fades at the edges.

And rain will be to erase,

letting these memories

soften and stain—

watercolor ghosts bleeding

into old, brittle paper.

Even if regrets could speak,

they’d stammer like a train

faltering on its rails,

trying to say, before the last stop,

to what was gone

and what would be

to make this place unspool

a two-colored film:

sepia and slate.