The Salt-Crusted Silence

The lighthouse beam sweeps over the shoreline, illuminating the skeletons of old rowboats, their ribs bleached white and brittle as bone, against the obsidian pulse of the rising tide.

Wind-whipped salt clings to the windowpanes, a fine, crystalline frost that obscures the view, distorting the distance where the grey sea meets the grey sky in a seamless, heavy union.

No one walks the boardwalk now, only the ghosts of laughter and summer heat, trapped in the peeling paint of the ice cream stand, shivering as the fog rolls in to claim the sand.

The rhythmic thrum of the ocean persists, a low, guttural murmur that predates speech, echoing in the hollows of driftwood caves, filling the void where the town used to breathe.