The Silent Language of Rust and Salt

The pier's ribs are bleached by the sun, where the tide has unraveled the rope's tight weave, and the barnacles map their constellations on the iron hulls that the ocean claimed.

The salt is a persistent scribe, etching its pale calligraphy onto the glass of the lighthouse, where the lamp's eye is closed and the beam has long since surrendered to the fog.

Only the gulls speak in their shrill, jagged tongues, circling the skeletons of dories that rest in the mud when the water retreats, leaving behind the scent of kelp and forgotten anchors.