Atlas of Quiet Currents

At night the seabed listens with copper ribs, each cable a dark vein humming borrowed names. Cities sleep above, their windows full of aquarium light, while under them the water keeps the vowels warm.

A trawler passes, slow as a hand over old braille, and the signal bends, then finds its posture again. Somewhere, a daughter sends a photo of rain on glass; somewhere else, a mother opens it like bread.

Salt writes its patient grammar on every sheath and bolt, barnacles collar the lines like tiny white bells. Even silence here is muscular, full of drift and pressure, a held breath carrying birthdays, apologies, weather.

When storms erase the horizon, the messages keep walking, lanternless, footstep by footstep through black water. By dawn they arrive as ordinary screens and morning coffee, and no one tastes the ocean on their tongue but it is there.