The water in my kettle tastes like city bones

I boiled it at 4:17 a.m. again, just to hear the silence between the whine and the hiss. The tap’s been doing that low groan lately—like something’s trying to speak through the pipes. I’ve lived in this apartment ten years and only now notice how the water smells faintly of rust and old concrete, like the city’s not just built over the ground but into it. I keep thinking about the aqueducts they buried under the old district, how they still carry the same water from hills we don’t even name anymore. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep. Not the noise, not the light. Just the taste of what’s been mov