Cartography of Static

On the roof, the antenna is a thin tree listening to the dark like a deer at a fence. Static drifts down in silver flakes, settling on my wrists, the city breathing below.

I tune for a voice and find a storm instead, clouds rubbing their ribs together, a wide animal pacing the sky. Each crackle is a footfall in another weather.

Inside, the radio’s blue eye keeps watch, an unblinking pond with a moon of glass. I kneel to it, and the hiss becomes a shoreline, grains of salt, the old tides stepping back.

Somewhere, a song tries on a throat, barely a thread, then gone. I hold the silence like a map and trace the places I have not yet been.