Map of Salt

At low tide the shore keeps its notebooks open, shallow basins rimmed with mica and weed. Each pool holds a small weather of its own, clouds broken into coins of light.

I kneel and the salt maps my wrists, a soft latitude inked by the sea. Crabs stitch their red commas across the page, urchins close like fists around a dark seed.

Far out, a boat is only a rumor of wood, a line drawn thin against the afternoon. I imagine the tide lifting this whole ledger, turning it toward some wider reading.

When the water returns, the handwriting blurs, but the skin remembers its brief grammar. I stand, and the sand keeps my shadow as if it were a bookmark left behind.