Salt Garden, Orbital

We keep a garden of salt in the ship’s quiet belly, crystals growing like slow thunder over black trays, each grain a small geography that remembers oceans.

The vents breathe a colder dawn through the conduits, and I mist the beds with a borrowed comet, my gloves smelling faintly of kelp and metal.

Outside, the planet turns its blue eye without blinking, inside, light leans through the lattice in pale ribs, making tides where no water can keep its name.

At night I harvest a handful into my pocket, press it to my tongue to hear the choir of distances, and sleep as the hull hums, a hive of distant storms.