Night Shift at the Seed Vault

At midnight the mountain opens like a held breath. Steel doors bloom frost; my badge is a small moon. Inside, the shelves sleep in numbered weather, every packet a summer folded to a whisper.

Barley from valleys now paved with parking lots, millet that remembers red dust on bare ankles, rice with the shine of river light in its spine waits in paper skins, patient as unopened letters.

The generators hum their low cathedral note. I walk the aisles and hear remote monsoons, wind combing wheat in languages no map can keep, bees rehearsing gold in orchards not yet born.

When I log out, dawn is a pale seed itself. Snow takes my footprints and stores them briefly. Somewhere a child will bite into August and never know this cold room sang first.