Cartography of the Quiet Signal

At midnight the antenna lifts its thin ribs, a black reed in the pond of air. Static breathes like frost on a window. I listen for a syllable of weather.

The station map is a constellation of call signs, letters that glow and fade like harbor lights. Somewhere a voice cups a glass of water, and speaks to a room I cannot see.

Signals arrive with a crease, a delay, as if they traveled by train through the dusk. They carry the dust of their towns, the hush of fields turning over in sleep.

In the quiet between them, I measure my own orbit, a needle wavering over magnetic dark. The world is huge and tender with distance, and yet a whisper finds its way.