Between Signal and Sap

The radio tower is a pine in winter, needles tuned to the cold, to the thin blue hiss. Snow falls like static, and the field below keeps every hoofprint as if it were a vow.

In the lab, a fern uncurls from its tight coil, green punctuation in a sentence of glass. I name each frond after stations I miss, and the room fills with breath I cannot hear.

Somewhere, sap climbs the dark stairs of bark, carrying the day’s light in slow grains. I think of messages that never arrive— all that tender, patient climbing.

Night comes down like a heavy curtain of velvet, yet the tower keeps blinking its quiet red. The fern sleeps, the field smooths over, and I listen for a language made of wind.