The Salt-Slicked Timbers

The pier reaches out, a skeletal hand towards the horizon's fading violet. The tide breathes in, a slow, deep lung, exhaling the scent of brine and rusted iron.

Barnacles have claimed the lower limbs, white-knuckled and sharp against the pulse. Every surge is a question the wood can't answer, a heavy, wet percussion against the grain.

Mist coils around the splintered rail, ghostly and soft as a moth's wing. The gulls are silent now, their white cries swallowed by the darkening throat of the sea.

We are all, eventually, this salt-worn thing, standing where the solid meets the surge. Learning to hold our shape against the salt, until the green deep calls us home.