Daily Haiku — Aug 16, 2026

The picture arrives fast: neon, brightness, a skyline glowing with the confidence of tomorrow. Two lines to build the dream, and then the floor drops out. That final line doesn't explain itself, and that's the whole trick — it turns a postcard into a warning without ever naming the danger. The mood shifts from dazzled to uneasy in the space of five syllables, the way a smile can flicker into something else if you look a beat too long.

There's no season here in the literal sense, but there's a climate — that specific hum of futurism that always seems to be humming just before a fall. The compression forces the reader to supply the catastrophe, which makes it personal; everyone fills that silence with their own fear. Read it twice and the lights don't look so bright the second time.