Moss Atlas

At the hilltop observatory, broken glass remembers stars. Rain threads through the dome like a violin tuning in the dark. Fern fists pry open the concrete seam by seam. Night smells of iron, wet bark, and old equations.

A fox slips between rusted tripods, silent as breath on mirrors. Moonlight pools in the lens and spills onto the floor, a pale map where planets used to be named by hand, chalk dust lifting whenever wind turns a page of sky.

Moss climbs the stair rail, patient as a metronome. It writes its green script over numbers, over dates, teaching stone to soften, metal to listen, teaching my pulse the long grammar of weather.

By dawn the east window burns with apricot light. Spiders string bright wires between abandoned knobs. Nothing here is ruined; everything is translating. The universe keeps speaking, now in leaf and water.