Salt Diary

The tide keeps no minutes, only margins— wet cursive on the sand that dries before I learn to read it.

I have carried salt in my pockets for years, small crystals ground from conversations I was too slow to answer. They dissolve against my skin when it rains.

A fisherman told me once that the ocean remembers every river but not a single name. I believed him the way I believe weather: without needing proof.

Some mornings the fog is so thick it erases the difference between the water and the breathing above it. I stand at the rail and taste the air— mineral, ancient, unfinished.

What I mean is, I keep returning to the same stretch of shore where the waves rewrite themselves and call it new, and mean it.