Seed Vault at Dawn

Before sunrise, the mountain opens one cold eyelid, and steel stairs ring like struck glass under my boots. Inside, the air is a held breath, mineral and bright, rows of quiet envelopes sleeping in numbered light.

Each packet carries a weather that no longer visits: rain with the patience of grandmothers, wind that knew how to bend wheat without breaking it, summer bees stitching gold from clover to clover.

I sign my name beside a language of seeds, tiny alphabets of husk, vein, and dust. Some are the color of old tea leaves, some black as wet stones pulled from a riverbed.

When the door seals, morning spills over the snowfield. The valley below starts its engines, its smoke, its hurry. In my pocket, one stray grain warms against my palm like a small, stubborn star refusing extinction.