Signal Station at the Edge of the Trench

We built the station where the water turns to ink, a collar of glass and copper listening to the deep. Every night the trench exhales a slow blue Morse, and we answer with our thin, patient beams.

The currents braid our cables like wet hair, carry old hulls and wedding rings past our doors. Once, a whale brushed the dome, a continent of breath, and the room filled with the taste of thunder.

We keep logs in a language of salt and sputter, a calendar of glimmers rising from black. Some signals are storms of plankton, some are empty, all of them teach us the weight of distance.

When dawn comes, the sea drinks our light, turns our messages into a drifting hush. We sit with our tea, our boots drying slowly, and remember the way the dark answered back.