Salt Theater

The tide rehearses its one act— arrival, the long hush, then the dragging back of every offered stone.

I stood where the jetty crumbles into its own green beard, watching the water forget itself against the pilings, over and over, the way a tongue forgets a name it said too many times.

There were jellyfish once, translucent as church windows laid flat on the strand. We pressed our fingers close but never touched.

Now the salt air carries the particular rust of a carousel that hasn't turned in years, its horses fixed mid-leap, paint flaking into the mouths of mussels.

I keep returning to this shore not for what it holds but for the clean way it empties— every evening the same theater, the curtain of foam, the dark wing waiting.