Under the Ice, a City of Breath

The glacier keeps its ledger in blue ink, pages compressed by centuries of winter. I walk its underside in a borrowed suit, every step a hush of brittle stars.

Below, the vents are chimneys without houses, exhaling mineral smoke like slow, old prayers. The water glows green where the heat arrives, and my lamp seems suddenly provincial.

There are towers here, but they are only currents, spirals of warm and cold negotiating the dark. A fish pauses, a comma in a sentence too ancient to be read aloud.

I think of all the fires we build above, how they bend air and call it home. Here, the heat is a rumor with a pulse, and the ice writes it down, and keeps it.