Louisville, KY

Journal Entry – September 17, 1871

The dawn breaks sullen and gray, as though the heavens have grown weary of their own watchfulness. Along the riverfront, smoke coils in lazy ribbons from the steamboats, carrying with it the sour tang of spent fire and yesterday’s secrets.

Women in plain bonnets move in silent procession toward the market, their eyes lowered, their baskets already burdened with more than vegetables. Each step seems measured, deliberate, as though every cobblestone conceals a truth best left unsaid.

I pause beneath an iron streetlamp, fingers grazing the cool metal. It hums faintly with the echo of passing conversations—a ledger of debts and whispered betrayals. The river remembers everything; it carries the city’s confessions downstream, unburdened and unashamed.