Freezer Cleanout

In 2018 somebody in Copenhagen wanted the shelf back. Behind the labeled years sat jars nobody had asked after in two decades: dirt the Army pulled up through a mile of ice in the sixties, while digging a place to hide missiles it never hid.

The dirt last saw daylight four hundred and sixteen thousand years ago. It kept the fat of bacteria the way a pan keeps grease, and the grease, read right, is a thermometer: summers four point seven degrees warmer than ours. Not a furnace. A good July, kept on.

We've had that warmth before, for a while, and the ice stayed. What was different was how long. Anyone who has defrosted a freezer knows the cold holds and holds, and then it doesn't.