Lanterns in the Salt

The dry lake is a plate of breath, wind skating its pale grammar across the salt. I walk where water used to practice its scales, a hush of minerals ringing underfoot.

At dusk, the horizon lifts a line of lanterns— not hung, not held, just orbiting the air. They hum in a language of moths and static, and the sky answers in low, blue vowels.

I keep a pocket of small temperatures, warm stones, a peel of orange, the name of a road. Each glows briefly, then cools into its own shape, as if remembering were a kind of weather.

Night settles like silt in a slow, invisible river. The lanterns drift inward, becoming constellations. I am a witness with dust on my mouth, still tasting the light I cannot hold.