Atlas of Quiet Machines

In the workshop of dusk, the radios sleep with their small moons of glass; I brush dust from a dial, and the room remembers rain.

Outside, a train passes without a whistle, only the tremor of tables, a ripple in tea. The windows copy it, then let it go.

I keep a ledger of sounds that failed to arrive: the orchard wind, the door in another life, the kettle's thin call rising from no kitchen.

Night folds the tools into silhouettes. I write my name in grease on the bench, and the letters gleam like fish beneath dark water.