When the Seed Vault Breathes

At the bottom of the mountain drawers of winter sleep in rows, each seed a closed eyelid keeping one green sentence from vanishing.

Above them, the glacier loosens its blue grip, water feeling for the seams of stone; it speaks in cold syllables, a language of melt, drip, patience, warning.

Inside, the husks wait without bitterness: millet, bean, wild rye, a small republic of futures. Their silence is not empty, it is an orchard folded smaller than a fist.

I imagine the day the locks turn and hands carry these kernels back into weather, back into the black grammar of soil, where even the broken century might begin to leaf.