The Desert Keeps a Lantern

I found a lighthouse in a field of sand, its ladder eaten by wind, its door ajar. No coast, no gulls—only the low grammar of dunes shifting like a slow, patient breath.

Inside, the glass was milky with dust. The lamp held a wick braided from old receipts, ticket stubs, a map where roads are now dry rivers. I struck a match, and the room remembered glow.

The light went out into the dunes as a thin voice. It touched the ribs of a buried ship, the pale thorns of cactus, the sleeping forms of rusted radios, each still tuned to a past weather.

Somewhere, a traveler adjusted their compass, felt the beam ripple over the horizon. Not a rescue, not a promise—just a word held steady against the dark, and shared.