Coins On The Tray

They laid their gold on a tray the color of midnight, fingers ringed in stones that caught the candlelight like captive suns. Outside, a boy with a patched sleeve watched frost stitch lace across the bakery window. His breath bloomed and vanished, a ghost repeating itself. The men inside spoke of progress — steel rivers, glass towers that drink the clouds, oceans combed for oil. A gull’s cry cut through the smoke. It smelled of salt, of a shore too far to see, where waves still bow to no one. And somewhere between the clink of coins and the rattle of the boy’s thin cough, the truth waited — patient as winter, sharp as the wind slipping under the door.