Abyssal Bloom

Far below the reach of the eager sun, where pressure builds its heavy cathedral, brittle stars trace mandalas in the silt. They wait for the slow snow of forgotten things.

A polyps' breath takes a century to settle, calcifying the dark into pale, reaching fingers, an architecture of quiet resilience blooming without the memory of light.

Whale songs dissolve into a low tremor, vibrating through the calcium marrow of reefs that remember the shape of continents before the maps were drawn.

Here, the clock is measured in limestone, in the patient drift of phosphorus and salt, a cold eternity resting on the seabed, dreaming of nothing but the tide.