The Salted Breath

The fog arrives as a ghost of the tide, erasing the horizon line with a thumb of grey. It smells of rusted piers and ancient kelp, a cold dampness that clings to the wool of sweaters.

Gulls become disembodied cries in the white, their wings beating against the heavy silence. The lighthouse beam is a blunt instrument, striking the mist but never quite breaking it.

We walk where the sand is darkest, our footprints filling with salt-water shadows. The world has shrunk to the reach of our hands, a private continent bounded by the unseen surf.

Behind us, the town is a dream of brick and light, shivering in the damp embrace of the North Pacific. We are the only witnesses to the vanishing, two ghosts trailing salt and silence into the evening.