At the Meltwater Museum

The docents wheel in a glacier on a steel cradle, its blue bruises lit from beneath like a throat of glass. Children press their palms to the chill and withdraw, as if the cold might keep a signature.

A speaker plays recordings of melt— slow applause in a darkened room. I taste metal in the air, the clean bite of coins, and think of rivers learning new names.

Behind glass, a map curls from the heat of its own century. The pole is a pinhole; the world leaks salt. We study the captions like weather, reading what will be lost by the way it shines.

When we leave, the sun is a patient instrument, turning the city into a basin of light. Each gutter fills with the day’s thin runoff, each window a brief, thawed mirror.