Salt Dialect

The tide has a grammar no one transcribes— each wave a dependent clause curling back on the sentence it meant to finish, the reef clicking its consonants against the hull of a boat no one launched.

My grandmother spoke like that, mid-thought detours into the names of fish she'd never eat again, landlocked and loosening her grip on the coastline the way sleep loosens a fist.

I keep finding salt in old dictionaries, between the entries for longing and light. A stain the shape of a bay where someone pressed a wet thumb and didn't bother to explain.

There must be a word for this— the sound a language makes when it is no longer spoken aloud but still moves through the body, still seasons what it touches.