Luminance for a Spliced Sea

On the trench edge, divers unspool a night like a ribbon of ink; the cable gleams with cold freckles, a chain of tiny moons where plankton tap the passing current.

Above, a storm rehearses its brass, each wave a blown note, each crest a mouth; below, we solder the ocean's sentences, turning static into a quiet grammar.

A seal circles the worklight's halo, its eye a polished pebble of doubt; the wrench sings once, a soft metallic bell, and silence mends itself around the splice.

When we surface, the sky is rinsed and new, stars reappear like scattered filings; the sea keeps our heat, keeps our fingerprints, keeps the faint blue bloom where we were.