Salt to Mouth

Night shift hums in the desalination hall, steel ribs sweating a thin, blue light. The sea arrives in a thousand pipes, a language of grit and brine.

I watch membranes sip the darkness clean, their quiet pressure like a held breath. Salt falls out, a chalky snowfall, filling the bins with a pale history.

Outside, the harbor flexes its slow shoulders, cranes bowing as if in prayer. A gull writes a white line across the wind, then folds it into the mouth of dusk.

By dawn, water steps out without its armor, clear as a bell, cold as peeled glass. We pour it into the city's waiting cups and taste the long, bright work of night.