Ledger Beneath the Glacier

Under Svalbard midnight, the mountain keeps a cold pulse. Doors of steel breathe frost against my gloves. Each key is a small moon, each turn a weather report from summers that have not happened yet.

Inside, shelves climb the dark like patient choirs. Packets of millet, rice, amaranth, blue maize sleep in silver envelopes, light as letters, addressed to hands we will never meet.

I scan barcodes; the scanner chirps like a winter bird. On the concrete, meltwater writes brief rivers then vanishes back into the rock, as if practicing the grammar of return.

When I leave, dawn is a pale seam over ice. The wind combs snow into bright, unread pages. Behind me, the mountain closes around its library, and the future rustles once, then is still.