The Rusting Sentinel

The iron flakes away like dried blood under the indifferent salt winds, a silent monolith on the fractured granite. The lens is dark, shattered by a winter gale long before the maps were redrawn.

Gulls nest in the hollow throat of the spiral stair, their sharp cries echoing where boots once clattered. Down below, the sea still throws its white fists against the foundation, oblivious to the fact that nobody is watching the horizon anymore.

It stands only to cast a shadow now, a sundial for the crabs and the returning tide. When the fog rolls in thick like wet wool, ships rely on satellites, passing in the gray, leaving the old keeper to its ghosts.