Inventory of a Lighthouse Keeper

I count the things the fog leaves behind: one gull's cry, salted and unanswered, a rope gone soft as the hand that wound it, the long brass throat of the lamp swallowing its own gold.

Nights, the sea practices my name against the rocks and forgets it by morning. I have learned to be a kind of weather— a steadiness ships mistake for shore, a light that asks for nothing back.

There is a chair that holds the shape of waiting. There is a window the storms keep polishing. I write the hours in a book no one reads, each page a small confession that the dark, too, needs tending.

When the supply boat comes, the men avoid my eyes, as if loneliness were a thing they might catch. I hand them my letters, take their bread, and watch them grow small on the water— a habit the horizon taught me.

Some evenings I climb to the glass and stand inside the burning, turning eye, and feel the whole coast lean on me to keep its ledger of arrivals, its grief of departures, its faith that something stays awake.