Tidal Orchard

At low tide the seabed opens like a ledger, its pages inked with eelgrass, pebbles, a stray shoe. I walk the wet gloss where the land forgets its name, listening to gulls stitch the horizon to the air.

Farther in, an orchard leans toward the salt light, apples mottled with tide marks and rust. Each tree keeps a map of storms in its rings, each leaf a small bell that doesn’t ring, only shivers.

I pick one fruit and feel the sea inside it, brine at the core, a sweetness that argues back. The juice runs down my wrist like a quiet fault line, and the shoreline redraws itself with every breath.

By dusk the boats are dark commas on the water, pausing in a sentence I can’t finish. I stand between orchard and surf, a hinge of salt, and let the night fold me into its damp music.