Salt Memoir

The tide pulls back its long confession, leaves a rim of foam on basalt, and I remember how my grandmother folded salt into bread dough at dawn, her knuckles dusted white as shells.

There is a grammar to what the sea forgets— the hull number of a boat gone under, the exact shade of a flare before it was swallowed by low clouds. Everything important dissolves first.

I walked the strand at Inishmore once, stones rounded to the patience of centuries, each one a word the Atlantic had been trying to pronounce and finally gave up on.

She told me salt is the oldest preservative, older than fire, older than longing. I think she meant that what stings us is also what keeps us from disappearing altogether.

Tonight the water is the color of iron and the wind carries nothing I can name. I kneel where the waveline darkens the sand and taste the air—still sharp, still tasting of her kitchen.