What the Salt Flat Remembers

The white crust holds the shape of water that has not been here in ten thousand years. Every boot print fills with blue sky.

Somewhere beneath this silence the brine still moves— slow, lateral, tasting of iron and old storms— unwilling to forget the sea it was.

I walked out until the mountains became a smear of charcoal on the horizon, until my own shadow looked like a stranger's, until the heat made the air visible.

There is a kind of memory that does not know it is remembering. The flat holds me the way the desert holds rain: briefly, and with great attention.

When evening comes the salt turns rose, then violet. It takes the color in and gives nothing back— just the held breath of it, the long kept fact.