Under the Orchard of Radio

The orchard hums with invisible bees, wires strung between branches like soft harp strings, each leaf a small receiver for the weather, each apple a dark planet turning in its sleep.

At dusk, the static rises like a tide, an old voice swims through, metallic and warm— my name spoken as if it were a lamp, lighting a path along the grass.

I walk and the ground gives back its mossy breath, gnats orbit the glow of my phone like brief stars, the air tastes of rain stored in wooden crates, and every step is a tuning fork.

By midnight the signal thins to a thread, crickets sew it into the hem of the dark, and I pocket the silence like a coin that still remembers the hand that spent it.