The Salt Keeper's Daughter

She learned to read the tides before she learned to read, her father's hands pale and cracked as driftwood, the brine worked so deep into his palms it came out in his sweat.

The flats stretched wide at low water, a mirror that didn't flatter— only gave back the gray sky honestly, the wading birds, the girl dragging her bucket.

He told her salt remembers everything it touched. The fish, the flood, the old boat's hull. She did not ask what it remembered of him, whether grief had a mineral taste.

Now she is the one who wakes before the light and walks the crusted edge of things. She collects what the water leaves behind— not souvenirs, she'd say. Evidence.

Some mornings the fog sits low and the horizon disappears and there is only the sound of her feet in wet sand, and the idea of the sea breathing somewhere just beyond seeing.