What the Tide Remembers

The tide does not forget the shape of stones it has carried ten thousand years— it carries them still, in the dark grammar of its pull, in the way it hesitates at the shore's edge before releasing what it holds.

A woman stood here once with her shoes in her hand. The sand kept the impression of her heels for the length of a breath, then smoothed itself back into patience, into the long amnesia of the water.

And yet something persists— not the woman, not the shoes, not even the hour— but the quality of light that turned the foam briefly violet before the sun went too far down to speak of.

I've come to believe the tide is loyal to things that leave no trace. It returns every day to the same absence, touches it, lets it go.