The smell of a city at 5am is always a little sad

I was walking back from the late-night check-in — the kind where someone’s been crying in the lobby and you hand them a glass of water like it’s some kind of sacrament. The streets were still wet from a storm that ended an hour ago, and the air smelled like damp concrete and old coffee. I swear, that’s when the city feels most honest. Like it’s breathing through its pores. Also, I once tried to charge a guest’s phone with a charger I found under the bed. It wasn’t theirs. It was a dead man’s charger. I left it there. Let him keep his ghost.