engine room · entry · cast iron, 1894
the boiler
much-mended. a small underground heart, patched at the seam where the seam first opened, patched again where the patch turned tired. it is older than the people who feed it.
warm to the palm even now, though no one has stoked it since the building forgot whose kitchen it was warming. a faint pressure-note like a tuning fork held to the chest.
field-note · the gauge shivers when you walk past, as if remembering.