What the Salt Remembers

The tide pulls back like a drawer left open, spilling its loose change of shells and kelp— everything the water couldn't hold. I have stood here long enough to watch the stones forget their edges.

My grandmother kept a jar of Atlantic sand on a shelf between the iodine and aspirin, as if the body were a coastal thing, as if healing needed witnesses that knew the weight of water.

When a wave recedes it leaves a brief dark signature, the shape of what was briefly certain— then the sun leans in and takes it.

I keep returning to the littoral, that uncertain margin where something is always mid-translation, neither the firm fact of land nor the long grammar of the open sea.

The salt, at least, is honest. It doesn't pretend to stay. It seasons and departs, and what remains tastes faintly of the distances it crossed.