Archive in the Empty Pool

At the edge of town, the drained municipal pool holds noon like a pale coin in its cracked blue bowl. Swallows stitch low arcs where lanes once held breath, and chalk numbers fade to salt on the diving wall.

Volunteers roll in carts of rescued books at dusk, stacking atlases where the deep end darkened. Pages lift in the wind like schools of silver fish, each map remembering rivers that have moved on.

Children descend the ladder with flashlights and apples, their laughter ricocheting off tile and concrete. They read about monsoons while moths orbit the beams, and the moon sits in the shallow end, unbroken.

By midnight the pool is a quiet lung of paper, spines warming under blankets of borrowed light. If you listen, the city turns a softened page, and tomorrow rises, damp-fingered, from the deep.