Night Market for Lost Satellites

At the edge of the city, a midnight bazaar hums, where vendors spread tarps of black velvet and tinfoil, and the air smells of ozone and cut oranges, like thunder just after a confession.

They sell antique antennas, bowls of static, bolts that still remember the pressure of launch, and I lift a cracked dish to my ear and hear a comet scraping old songs from the dark.

A child bargains for a satellite's name tag, its letters worn soft by years of radiation; the clerk wraps it in paper that once held a map of the world before the rivers changed their minds.

Above us the real sky flickers, a living receipt, while the market folds into itself like a tide, and I walk home with a pocket of quiet, listening to gravity hum through my keys.