Tidal Memory

The tide withdraws and leaves its careful notations— shells worn smooth, stones arranged in alphabets only the wind can read.

You stand at the wrack line, tracing what the sea has written and erased, each wave a revision, a draft crossed out in salt and foam.

Nothing stays written here. The sand remembers nothing but the pressure of your feet, and even that dissolves.

Still, we come back— to this erasure, this beautiful forgetting— seeking what cannot be held, knowing the holding is the whole point.