The Library of Tides

At dawn the coast turns a page, its paper wet and bright, letters of foam unfurling where the kelp pens its slow script. Gulls edit the margins, crossing out the sun with their wings. A lighthouse hums like a scholar clearing his throat.

I walk the stacks of tidepools, glass bowls holding yesterday. Each shell a small chamber where a sea once practiced breath, each pebble a dull vowel, rolled smooth by repetition. The wind recites the index in a language of salt.

Midday is a silent librarian, palms full of light, placing stamps on waves that will never return. Children borrow the horizon, hands sticky with brine, and promise, without knowing, to bring it back.

When evening closes the book, the shore is all hushed binding, ink of the deep climbs the stairs of the beach. I leave my footprints like notes for another reader, and the tide erases them, politely, like a good editor.