Signal in the Salt Wind

The airstrip is a sheet of mica, heat lifting it in slow, clear breaths, and the lone tower hums like a shell pressed to the ear of the plain.

A radio chirps, then dissolves into the lace of static; even silence has its migratory birds, gliding between antennas and sage.

I watch the wind work its salt needles through canvas, through stories, stitching a seam in the horizon where the light leaks out.

When dusk arrives, it is a thin blue blade laid on the tongue of the runway, and every star feels like an old call sign I almost answer by name.