Salt Lamp

The pink crystal sweats in summer, pooling brine on the windowsill where I once kept basil alive for a month. Now only this slow mineral weeping, this glow the color of a closing eyelid.

I have learned to read by it — not books, but the shapes the walls make when the overhead light is too honest. The lamp asks nothing. It gives back the salt it was given.

Somewhere deep in the Khewra mines a man chiseled this from a seam older than language, older than grief, and I have placed it next to my bed to soften what morning announces.

Some nights I wake and forget the century. The room is all amber and breath, a cave painted by someone who believed the dark was listening. I believe it too.