Shortwave

At midnight the dial glows its amber tooth, and the room fills with the static of far weather— a hiss like rain learning to speak, the long vowels of countries I will never enter.

I turn the knob the way you stir a sleeping pond, slow, listening for the fish of a voice to rise: a man reading numbers in a language that is only numbers, only the patience of saying them.

Somewhere a transmitter leans against the dark and throws its small bread to no one. I am the no one. I cup my ear like a shell and the ocean inside it belongs to another shore.

Then nothing. The carrier wave, the smooth gray milk of a frequency abandoned. I leave it on. Let the empty channel keep its vigil— some signals are only the proof that someone sent them.