Salt Museum

The museum keeps its salt in velvet cases, each crystal labeled with the ocean it forgot — Adriatic, Baltic, a nameless lake that dried before anyone thought to name it.

I press my tongue against the glass the way a child tests winter, and taste nothing but the faint electric hum of climate control, preserving what was never meant to last.

In the gift shop they sell tiny vials of reconstructed brine. A woman holds one to the light and says this is exactly the color of my mother's kitchen after a storm.

Outside, the parking lot shimmers. Heat lifts from the asphalt in long, slow curtains and for a moment every car is a creature crawling back toward water, its shell still warm from the journey.

I drive home with the windows down, the wind a rough tongue on my arm, and already the museum is dissolving — its corridors filling with tide, its labels peeling into salt again.