Plant That Teaches the Sea to Sing

At midnight the intake tunnels breathe like whales, drawing the black Atlantic through iron ribs. Floodlights hang in the mist, pale moons with cables, and gulls sleep folded on the warm concrete.

Inside, membranes thin as onion skin separate salt from memory, brine from thirst. Pumps keep a metronome under the floor, a low percussion you feel first in your teeth.

Night technicians move between gauges and steam, their gloves bright with tiny constellations of spray. Someone hums, and the pipes answer in minor chords; somewhere inland, empty cups wait in cupboards.

By dawn the storage tanks are full of clear silence. Sunlight strikes the catwalks, copper then white. The ocean returns heavier, glittering, unchanged, while the city lifts a glass and calls it morning.