Under the Glacier, a Library of Seeds

The mountain keeps its pulse in blue silence, a vault lit like a chapel of winter steel; inside each drawer, a field sleeps folded, wheat, millet, rice, each grain a closed eye.

Outside, wind combs the dark with icy fingers, but down here the air is measured, almost holy. My breath clouds the glass, then vanishes as if taught to kneel.

I read the labels like names on small gravestones, valleys, deltas, villages erased by maps. A kernel from a riverbank now salt, beans from a hillside that forgot the rain.

When I seal the last tray, the room hums on, a low chord under the planet's restless weather. Tomorrow, somewhere, a child will split an apple, and not know this cold kept sweetness possible.