Tide Station

At low tide the old subway breathes through barnacled grates. Salt light ladders down the stairwell, green as bottle glass. Turnstiles stand with necklaces of kelp, patient and bright. A school of silver fish flickers where tickets once tore.

On the platform, anemones open like soft sirens. Their mouths sip the iron taste of forgotten schedules. My footsteps send small storms through dust of crushed shells. Every pillar wears a tide-mark, a careful calendar.

In the tunnel, current hums on the rails like a bowed string. Crabs translate the graffiti with tapping red hands. Far off, a whale-note drifts in and rounds each corner. The dark is no longer absence; it is inhabited blue.

When the water rises, the station becomes a lung again. Doors seal, then bloom with bubbles, each one a brief moon. I leave by the street where rain begins to smell of brine, carrying in my coat one scale of light, still moving.