Salt Liturgy

The tide unpacks its cargo on the stones— driftwood sinewed white, a crab shell thin as a communion wafer, the frayed rope that once held something to something else.

I have been that rope. I have been the distance between two pilings, taut with purpose, then slack, then salted through until the fibers forgot their twist.

Somewhere a bell buoy tilts and the sound crosses water the way a name crosses years— dimmer each time, but still arriving with its mouth open.

The sea does not keep what it takes. It gives back piecemeal: a plank, a bottle ground to gemstone, the outline of a hand pressed into wet sand and filling.

I stand where the water decides to stop being water and become mirror, then foam, then nothing you could hold. The gulls wheel their one white question overhead.