Salt Covenant

The tide pulls back its white hem and leaves behind a ledger — crab shells, rope, the rusted latch of something that once held.

I have stood at this margin before, where the wet sand mirrors a sky too wide for any single grief. The plovers write and erase their signatures without regret.

There was a house here, once, with a kitchen that smelled of dill and the slow collapse of bread. Now the dunes have taken the porch steps and the wind inherits every room.

What the salt preserves it also changes: wood becomes silver, iron becomes lace, and the voices I came to find have thinned into the sound the grass makes when no one is listening.

I leave my shoes at the wrack line and walk until my footprints fill with water — each one a small, temporary well drawing from the same ancient table that has always offered, and always taken back.