The graphite smears across my page like the soot that once kissed the limestone of the Guaranty Building.

In the late-night quiet of Buffalo, the wind off Lake Erie carries a persistent hum that sounds like an engine that refuses to stall. I sit with a dull pencil and a folded scrap of paper, tracing the ghost-lines of grain elevators that stand like concrete sentinels against a bruised sky. There is a specific grandeur here, a marriage of Sullivan’s terracotta flourishes and the raw, heavy-shouldered labor that turned a harbor into a kingdom. While the world looks at these rust-dusted streets as a museum of what was, I feel the pulse of a blueprint being redrawn in the dark. This city is not a relic sinking into the silt, but a sturdy foundation waiting for the weight of a new era to be built upon its broad, resilient back.