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Strange Signals

by Sebastian Michaels
Chapter 2
Tonight the signal settles strange, traveler,
like a lantern hung from a crooked fencepost,
swinging though no wind stirs the field.

The station lights here pulse softer
as if they sense an arrival
the rest of us are too polite to name.
Something quiet has drifted across the valley,
a hush with teeth,
curling through barn slats
and motel air vents
and the hollow ridges of old grain silos.

A trucker on the graveyard haul
phoned in a rumor at twilight,
said the yellow lines on the highway
kept bending under his headlights,
uncoiling like thin serpents
drawn toward a single distant glow.
He followed anyway,
because the human heart is stubborn
and night roads always pretend they know better.

Even the wheat tonight holds its breath.
Ears tilt as if listening
for a footstep too light for soil to notice.
And the broadcast boards,
these faithful dials and filaments,
twitch whenever I touch them,
like a beast rousing from a long nap.

So settle in.
Pour whatever comfort you keep close.
The Strangest Unknown waits at the edge of the dial,
where static tastes of copper,
and stories rise from places
that never wanted to be seen in daylight.
If the signal wavers,
lean closer.
Not everything whispering out there
is meant to stay unheard.