The Archive Beneath the Thaw

When the glacier loosens its white clasp, a staircase of blue light opens— I follow the drip's slow metronome into the breath of the ice.

Shelves hum under the weight of old weather, pages stained with salt and mica. Each word is a fossil of a wind, its mouth still shaped to speak.

I read by a lamp of pooled melt, water thick with sky and centuries. The sentences tilt, as if to swim, forgetting which way is air.

Above, spring rehearses in the rocks, below, the archive dreams in cold. I leave a handprint on the frost of a cover and it keeps my warmth like a vow.