Zinc and Salt

The harbor breathes in grey, a slow exhaling of the tide against the salt-cracked wood. Masts are ghosts of vertical intent.

Iron bells toll for the invisible, a hollow resonance that lingers in the pockets of the mist. The water is a sheet of unpolished zinc.

Somewhere, a diesel engine coughs, tearing the silk of the morning, then subsides into the rhythm of the hidden, heaving deep.