Salt Flats at Dusk

The last light drags itself across the flats like a man who has walked too far and no longer cares where he arrives.

Everything here is a mirror that has forgotten what it was made to show — only sky, inverted, trembling at the edges.

A heron stands at the seam between reflections, one leg raised as if mid-thought, as if the water asked a question and the body answered before the mind.

I have come here with my grief folded in my coat pocket, waiting to unfold it the way you unfold a letter in a place that is large enough to hold its news.

The salt crunches underfoot like old snow, like something that has been waiting to be walked on for a very long time.