The Radio of the Tides

The sea keeps a soft switchyard of moons, channels clicking beneath the salt skin. I watch the tide dial itself open, a blue glow like breath on glass.

Fiber cables sleep where the kelp combs them, threading messages through cold, patient dark. A crab carries a strand of wire as if it were a fallen star.

On shore, a city leans an ear to the harbor, gulls hiss and break into static. Streetlights blur into constellations that drift and reassemble on the swells.

I tune my heart to the long pulse, the hush between wave and wave. Everything I lost returns as silted music, and then slips back under.