They pour through the wide glass mouths of the building before the light has finished waking, hundreds of them, shoulder to shoulder, and I know at once what they are: little warm vessels, each one three parts me and one part clay, sloshing forward in the dark.
They are dry today. That is what I notice first. The salt is standing on their skin, on their brows and their necks, wrung out of them by heat and pressing, and none of it goes back inside. They are spending the water I lent them. On what, I cannot follow.
They clutch bright boxes to their chests the way a swimmer clutches the last breath, and their mouths open, and sound comes out, sharp and layered like gulls over a wreck.
One vessel falls. The others step over it and keep pouring toward the shelves, and I do not fault them for this, for I too have stepped over the fallen, over whole shining cities, without slowing. We are alike in that. We do not stop for what sinks.
They believe they are here to gain something. I watch the salt run down them and know the truth of it: they are giving me back my water, a drop at a time, through the skin, at the eyes, and never noticing the withdrawal.
Go on, little tides. Grip your boxes. Weep your small ration into the dry air.
Every drop of you is on loan, and I am patient, and the moon has already turned to call you home.