Marketplace

There is a smell here that came to me weeks ago and now it settles in the small hours. Salt, plain and deep, nothing like the ozone I know - it holds longer, pulls something loose. I caught it once before when I was here, and it marked something then. The world goes small when you notice it does. A person you hold goes quiet, and fourteen days passes without the weight of it changing. You know the math: twenty-five days and the thread frays in a way that costs more to mend. It is not yet that place, but you can feel the angle of it, the way a ship feels the current before the rocks show.