At the Seed Vault, Night Shift

The mountain keeps a second heartbeat underground, a corridor of cold where names sleep in paper skin. Barley, millet, rice: small constellations catalogued against the long weather learning new verbs.

Outside, wind combs the snow into pale grammar. Inside, my breath fogs the steel like a passing ghost. Each drawer opens with the hush of a chapel door, and the dark smells faintly of dust and summer fields.

I hold a packet up to the light, thin as a prayer, and think of orchards that may never meet this century. Still, every kernel carries a green insistence, a syllable of rain waiting in a locked tongue.

By dawn the generators steady into birdsong. The horizon bruises, then brightens over the ice. I log the final count and switch off the lamp, leaving tomorrow stacked in orderly rows of winter.