Cartography of Quiet Frequencies

At dawn the flats are a sheet of tin, wind combing the grit into soft dunes of sound. A rusted antenna leans like a question, its shadow a compass with no north.

I tune the air for what is not there— the old stations, the storms, the mouth of a loved one. Static blooms like milkweed, seeds of hiss, drifts over the salt pan and settles in my hair.

In the heat, mirages lift their glass cities, stairs of light going nowhere but upward. Even the lizards pause, listening, as if the silence itself is a broadcast.

By evening the horizon folds like a map, creases caught between my fingers and the sky. I walk home carrying the quiet's bright coil, a frequency that doesn't need a receiver.