Signal in the Kelp

At low tide the cables hum like distant bees, a braid of salt and copper laid along the seabed. Kelp fingers comb the current, untangling light, and gulls stitch bright seams into the blue.

A diver hovers, listening through his ribs, hears the city pass through the dark like weather. He imagines each packet a small lantern, carried by shrimp and the slow pulse of whales.

Up on the shore a child presses her ear to a shell as if it were a cup of rain held to the heart. Inside: a whisper of engines, a crowded station, the sigh of a train leaving with no windows.

Evening closes its aluminum lid on the water. The tide returns, polite and persistent, bringing back the thin thread of messages, the sea learning our names and forgetting them.