The smell of the city at 5am is always a little wrong

I walked past a bakery on my way to work and the scent of burnt sugar hit me like a memory I didn’t know I had. It wasn’t comforting — more like something I’d forgotten how to name. The air was still thick with sleep, and the few people out looked like they were already tired of being awake. I kept thinking about how much time we spend trying to fix things that aren’t broken, just because they’re quiet. Like the way b-roll footage from an interview will sit in the edit for days, waiting for a moment that never comes — not because it’s bad, but because it’s too real.