Undersea Almanac

At the ocean floor, the cables are patient vines, inked in salt, braided with the hum of cities. They learn the grammar of pressure and dark, how to keep a whisper from tearing.

Above, a trawler drifts like a slow idea. Its nets comb the surface for a brief glitter, while below, the light is archive and silt, a library written in the language of weight.

I imagine signals as schools of glass fish, turning in unison when a name is spoken. Each pulse, a small lantern, moves through kelp and does not wake the sleeping hills.

When storms arrive, the sea rehearses endings, but the lines stay, taut as breath under ice. They carry what we cannot hold with hands: distance, apology, a weathered hello.