The Lighthouse Keeper's Inventory

He counts the things the tide returns: a wristwatch ticking salt, one shoe still laced, the bottle with no letter, only fog folded inside.

The lamp above him turns its slow vow, sweeping the dark like a hand across a sleeping forehead, and each rotation is a sentence he can almost finish.

In the keeper's log he writes the weight of weather, the colors of the sky's bruising, the names of ships he never knew but heard pass like rumor.

Some nights the gulls hold council on the railing, gray parliament debating the wind. He nods. He pours another cup. The kettle is the only mouth that answers.

By morning the rocks are honest again, scrubbed of their argument. He carries the empty pail down the stairs, believing, against all evidence, that the sea has begun to listen.