Instructions for a Seed Vault at Dawn

At the edge of town, the seed vault hums like a low cello. Frost maps the steel door with fern-white veins. Inside, jars of sleeping summers rest on numbered shelves, each label a small country folded into paper.

I uncap one and smell rain that hasn't happened yet, tomato vines climbing an absent fence, corn silk catching light like threads from a wedding dress, soil waiting in the dark with its patient mouth.

Outside, the river carries broken ice and bottle glass, sirens braid with geese above the bridge. Still, in this room, kernels click softly in their glass constellations, a language of future fields learning to breathe.

When morning opens, I return them to their quiet orbit. My gloves are dusted gold with pollen memory. The sun lifts over warehouses, ordinary and exact, and the day begins as if nothing miraculous was stored.