Cartography of the Night Orchard

The orchard after midnight is a town of lanterns, pears holding their small moons against the bark. Crickets rehearse their thin violins, and the soil breathes like a sleeping animal.

I walk between the rows, a slow astronomer, measuring distances with the hush of my shoes. Every leaf is a map folded into a fist, unfurling when the wind remembers it.

In the low branches, moths are loose stitches, sewing light to light, the seam of air. I taste the quiet and it tastes of rain iron, of rusted nails and the green pulp of dawn.

When I leave, the gate forgets my name. The night closes its notebook, ink still wet. Somewhere a pear drops without a sound, and the dark rewrites the story of its fall.