Under the Signal Ferns

The platform hums like a held note, light pooling in the moss between tracks. A fern lifts its fronds, a green antenna listening for footsteps that never come.

Above, the city is a river of glass. Below, the old rails remember rain, iron tasting the salt of shoes and storms, a lullaby of brakes, a distant gull.

I follow the glow through service doors, past wires that dream of distant thunder. My hands carry the day’s heat like coals, cooling on the damp breath of stone.

Here, the plants are not wild but patient, sharing their slow, chemical lamps. They teach the dark a softer grammar, and the dark, in turn, learns my name.