The Orchard Under Permafrost

At the pole, the mountain keeps a library of seeds. Steel doors breathe fog when the night shift turns the key. Labels whisper continents in cramped black ink. Outside, the aurora folds and unfolds like green silk.

I hold a grain no larger than a tear of salt, yet it carries summer thunder, bees in clover, children running between rows of sun-warm corn, the slow grammar of rain on tin roofs.

Freezers hum a single, patient note. In that note sleep orchards we have not earned yet, peaches for a coast still learning its shoreline, rice for a delta after the water remembers mercy.

When morning arrives, pale and blade-thin, we close the vault and climb back into weather. The world above is unfinished, loud with thaw, and in my pocket, one seed knocks like a small heart.