At the City Seed Library

Rain hangs from the bike racks like tuning forks, and inside, envelopes breathe in wooden drawers. Each packet is a weather report in miniature, a map folded small enough to fit a palm.

An old cashier counts kernels instead of coins, her fingers dusted gold as late sunlight. She says this bean remembers three dry summers, this dill leans toward any voice that hums.

Outside, sirens comb the avenue for urgency, but here the air is slow with loam and paper. Children press their names into compostable labels, as if naming were already a kind of root.

By closing time, we leave with pockets rustling. The moon rises, pale as a turned-over stone. In window boxes, in cracked municipal soil, town lights and seedlings learn to share one sky.