Archivist of the Shore

At low tide the beach is a library of salted pages laid open to the wind; I walk the aisles of wrack and broken shell, listening for the index of the waves.

Each pool is a small lens of the past, holding a sky from another hour, a gull's white annotation on the blue, the ache of a boat that chose to be horizon.

I pocket a pebble, a round syllable warmed by a long syllable of sun; it will sit on my desk like a punctuation mark for a sentence I can't yet finish.

When night returns, the tide reclaims its shelves, erasing the footnotes with a patient hand; but in the dark I hear the shelves breathe— a slow archive, learning me by touch.