Lantern Fish

Down where the sun is only rumour, where the pressure folds a hand like paper, small fish carry lamps.

No one gave them fire. They grew it, the way you grow a habit, a grief, a faith — slowly, from the inside, because the alternative was the dark.

I think about them when the house is too quiet. How they don’t light the whole ocean. How they only light enough.

A body’s length. A mouth’s width. A single blue question held out into the black:

Is anyone here? Is anyone here?

And sometimes, far off, the faintest answering flicker.