Some nights it is alarmingly imperceptible: an exoskeleton ascends on iron rivets and steel; unseen scaffolding tapers to a steady pulsing point of phosphorescenceโ a mechanical heart circulating red light into leaden clouds.
Some nights the air thickens with cordite, grief, and snow.
Tonight with winter here we can see the towerโs beacon blinking through a tangled scrim of trees half a mile across town, and yet even with our bodies squeezed together like radio dials in the dark we are unable to tune it inโ the signal that would calibrate our estranged transistor hearts.