Seed Bank Under the Inland Sea

At low tide the city exhales rust and salt, elevators bloom with barnacles and light, we wade through offices where fish sleep in chairs, our lamps are small moons in the drowned cubicles.

Beneath the courthouse, a vault, still dry, rows of envelopes, each a paper boat of names, grain asleep inside, a silence of husks, the key turns like a planet on its axis.

We open one: millet, tiny stars, pour it into our palms and it warms, as if it remembers summer wind and sparrows, as if it still hears the old market's bells.

We plant on rooftops, in the ribs of cranes, soil carried in buckets like dark water, the sprouts rise through the fog's thin music, and the sea steps back, listening.