Rain collects secrets the pavement forgets. Every reflection tells the same lie twice. Plastic shadows in borrowed light, faces loop on billboard skies. Footsteps scatter through coded glass— I keep chasing shapes that never pass. They flicker when I blink too slow, names erased before they’re known. Ghosts in the alleyways. They know my name, but not my face. Ghosts in the alleyways. They fade, but never go away. Paper hands in a data stream, voices melt into machine dreams. Every word a counterfeit prayer, I breathe it in; it’s still not air. Don’t ask what’s real, just what remains. The signal lies, but the echo stays. Ghosts in the alleyways. They know my name, but not my face. Ghosts in the alleyways. They fade, but never go away. Somewhere between the noise and the rain, something human almost speaks.
