Seed Vault, Midnight Shift

The glacier hums above us like a sleeping engine, blue pressure in the dark, patient as scripture. I sign my name beside trays of wheat and millet, each kernel a small fist closed around a summer.

My lamp makes a private weather over the shelves: frosted labels, tin drawers, the breath of steel. Outside, storms rehearse their bright arguments, but here the seeds keep their syllables intact.

Some nights I imagine the future opening these boxes, hands warm from another country’s dawn. They will not know my face, only this careful handwriting, and the way I left room for rain in the margins.

At shift’s end, I climb the tunnel toward morning. Snowlight pours down like milk through stone. Behind me, the vault settles deeper into silence, full of green languages waiting to be spoken.