Salt Garden at Midnight

At midnight the sea climbs the stone steps of the city, carrying a basket of moonlight and broken shells. Streetlamps lean down like tall reeds listening, and every window becomes a small, breathing tide.

On the bakery roof, pigeons sleep as if carved from smoke. A train far off drags a silver chain through the dark. Someone waters basil in a fourth-floor kitchen, and the leaves answer with a peppered, green perfume.

I walk where rain has polished the crosswalks to mirrors; neon loosens into ribbons under my shoes. In a puddle, the sky keeps rehearsing dawn, pink struck softly across a drum of asphalt.

By morning the waves will return to their wide grammar, the market will open crates of oranges and ice. But now the whole harbor is a salt garden, and the night blooms quietly inside its brine.