The gallery is a wet crown, and you take it like a keeper.

Safe railing. Fog in pulses. You count the echo when the horn-throat moans: one-Mississippi, two, three, the cliff. You name the doubled lights: buoy, town, air-lens. You name the footsteps you cannot hear from here: waves, if the pier is doing its play.

The station is alive the way weather and stone are alive. Not a soul. A system.

Headlamps crawl the spit—Ruiz, maybe Peck, Tess’s smaller lamp like a firefly with a job.

You can stay low and meet them with a report. You can name every “ghost” out loud as it happens, which is a kind of bravery that does not require wet socks.

A drop from the lantern-room eave hits your hood or hair with a tap that would have been a spirit at the start of the night and is a roof now. You almost laugh, then you don’t, because the shiver still deserves respect. Respect is not obedience to a lie. Respect is keeping the rail and telling the truth at the same volume as the fog.