The Lighthouse Keeper's Inventory

Three matches left, and the wick still thirsty. A jar of plum jam, sweet as last summer's letter. The barometer falls like a slow confession.

Outside, the gulls argue with the wind in a language older than wood, older than the iron stairs I climb each evening to feed the flame.

My wife's photograph has begun to fade where my thumb returns to her cheek. The salt does this. The salt undoes everything patient enough to stay.

Tonight a freighter passes, blinking twice— acknowledgment, or apology, I cannot say. I answer with the only word I know: light, light, light, light.

The fog comes in like a guest who will not leave, and I make tea for two, then drink them both, listening to the bell-buoy ring its small grief into the dark.