When the Divers Bring Up the Internet

At dawn the repair ship idles over a seam of weather, winches singing through gull salt and diesel light. Below us, the cable lies in black water like a nerve asleep under miles of cold.

Divers descend with lamps that open like lilies, their beams worrying silver from the silt. Fish turn in the glow, brief coins of attention, and the dark keeps folding its blue velvet deeper.

When they raise the damaged length to the deck, it arrives streaming weed, a stunned black vine. We touch the cut jacket, its copper syllables exposed, as if a storm had bitten through a sentence.

By night the splice is sealed, patient as suturing. Somewhere ashore, windows brighten one by one: a child's game, a sleepless baker, a woman hearing her brother's laugh return across the water.