The Rust-Slicked Harbor

The cranes are skeletal fingers scratching the belly of a low, grey sky. Iron flakes like burnt parchment, falling into the salt-slicked oil of the harbor.

Here, the tide is a slow breathing, dragging kelp across the rusted hulls where names have long since dissolved into a chorus of barnacles and brine.

A single beam of amber light cuts through the fog's thick wool, igniting a patch of copper scale until the dead metal briefly dreams of fire.

The wind hums in the hollow pipes, a low flute for the ghosts of rivets. Silence is the only cargo now, piled high against the rotting piers.