The jazz bar on the corner opens
only when the night grows quiet enough.

An old gramophone plays —
Art Tatum —
and the saxophone spills through cigarette smoke
like warm rain
falling inside the room.

I sit at the bar
and watch a glass
where the ice melts
slower than time.

The bartender wipes the tables
as if erasing dreams
the guests left behind.

Sometimes the door opens
and a little streetlight enters.
Sometimes something else —
something without a name.

Maybe it is silence
looking for a place to sit.
The piano repeats the same note
a third, maybe a fourth time.

There are evenings
that do not try to change anything.

They simply sit beside you
in a jazz bar at the edge of the city
and slowly, almost unnoticed,
change the way
you listen to your own heart.