What the Tide Returns

The shore forgives nothing, remembers everything. Each wave erases footprints, then leaves new ones, salt-sharp and temporary as a promise made in sleep. We came with buckets, collecting shells and certainties— small chambers spiraled tight, each one a room where something lived and left behind its walls. The water doesn't hoard. It takes what glitters, what breaks, what cannot float, and sends it back altered: sand-soft, light-boned, almost unrecognizable. There is a mercy in the ocean's amnesia, the way it tumbles edges smooth, converts the sharp and jagged into something we can hold. Wait for the tide. Everything returns transformed.