The Seed Vault's Wind

In the valley where the radio towers fade, a door in the mountain hums with its own winter. Inside, the air is a patient cold holding its breath between syllables of ice.

Rows of tin sleep like small, sealed moons. Each one keeps a library of hunger and rain, the bruised gold of corn, the rust of wheat, future fields curled tight as fists.

I brush a label, feel the tremor of names: places swallowed by floodlight and parking lots, names that used to be bread, then became vapor, now a script of promise on a white box.

Outside, a wind turns the grass into green static. It carries the far-off scent of thaw and diesel, and I think of the seeds unknowing in their dark, learning the song of spring by hearing no spring at all.