The Archive of Falling Seeds

In the city’s abandoned conservatory, light pools in the cracked basins where lilies once rehearsed the weather, and a single seed ticks like a small clock.

I carry a jar of such hours, each one wrapped in dust, in thin paper, each one a future I did not choose but keep anyway, a library of gravity.

Outside, the train lines hum like old strings. Pigeons braid their shadows through iron lace. A child chalks a door on a wall, the color of a door you would never lock.

By evening, the air smells of copper rain. I pour the seeds into my palm—warm, stubborn— and hear a field trying to remember itself, an orchard speaking in sleep to its tools.