diff --git a/core/archipelago/src/mesh/mod.rs b/core/archipelago/src/mesh/mod.rs
index 4b2b76bf..ae2d9389 100644
--- a/core/archipelago/src/mesh/mod.rs
+++ b/core/archipelago/src/mesh/mod.rs
@@ -38,6 +38,14 @@ use tokio::sync::watch;
 use tracing::{error, info, warn};
 
 const MESH_CONFIG_FILE: &str = "mesh-config.json";
+
+/// How long `MeshService::stop()` waits for the listener task to notice its
+/// shutdown signal and exit gracefully before force-aborting it. See
+/// `stop()`'s doc comment for the real incident this guards against: without
+/// a hard abort fallback, a slow-to-notice listener could be left running
+/// forever, orphaned, racing a later independently-started listener on the
+/// same serial port.
+const LISTENER_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT: Duration = Duration::from_secs(15);
 const MESH_IGNORED_RADIO_FILE: &str = "mesh-ignored-radio-contacts.json";
 const MESH_CONTACTS_FILE: &str = "mesh-contacts.json";
 
@@ -967,8 +975,36 @@ impl MeshService {
         if let Some(tx) = self.shutdown_tx.take() {
             let _ = tx.send(true);
         }
-        if let Some(handle) = self.listener_handle.take() {
-            let _ = handle.await;
+        if let Some(mut handle) = self.listener_handle.take() {
+            // Bounded wait for graceful shutdown, with a hard abort as
+            // fallback — confirmed live 2026-07-23: a caller-side timeout
+            // wrapping stop() (mesh::flash's STOP_LISTENER_TIMEOUT) cancelled
+            // this await when the listener was slow to notice its shutdown
+            // signal (mid multi-candidate probe), but `.take()` above had
+            // already cleared `listener_handle` to None — so MeshService
+            // believed it was stopped while the task kept running, orphaned
+            // (dropping a JoinHandle does not abort the task it points to).
+            // A later start() then spawned a second, fully independent
+            // listener session racing the orphaned one on the same serial
+            // port — neither could ever get a clean response, so every
+            // mesh.configure/probe against that device failed indefinitely
+            // even though the device itself was fine.
+            //
+            // Awaiting `&mut handle` (not `handle` by value) is what makes
+            // the fallback possible: the Future is polled through the
+            // reference, so if the timeout fires, this task's own `handle`
+            // binding is still ours to call `.abort()` on afterward —
+            // unlike moving `handle` into the timeout future outright, which
+            // would drop (and thus orphan) it on timeout with nothing left
+            // to abort.
+            if tokio::time::timeout(LISTENER_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT, &mut handle)
+                .await
+                .is_err()
+            {
+                warn!("Mesh listener did not shut down gracefully in time — aborting it");
+                handle.abort();
+                let _ = handle.await;
+            }
         }
         if let Some(handle) = self.deadman_handle.take() {
             handle.abort();