What the Salt Remembers

The tide does not return the same water twice. Still, the shore holds the shape of every wave that ever broke against it, grooved into the stone like letters no one taught.

My grandmother's hands moved through flour the way wind moves through long grass — without thinking, without stopping, some knowledge older than her name.

There is a word in the body for what we carry without knowing. The way a cup, emptied, still holds the ghost of heat, the ghost of thirst.

I stood at the edge of the ocean and could not remember what I came to ask. The salt air pressed its cold mouth to my face. It knew. It did not say.