What the Salt Remembers

The tide does not forget the shape of stone. It circles back each morning to the same worn hollows, pressing its cold mouth inside like someone reading braille in the dark.

My grandmother kept salt in a clay jar she never refilled — only topped with more, so somewhere at the bottom lived the grains from a year I wasn't born yet, tasting the same air.

There is a word in no language I know for the grief of objects that outlast their purpose: the hook with nothing left to hold, the cup set out for someone who won't come.

The sea keeps no such word. It only moves the way a body moves in sleep — not toward anything, not away, but continuous, like breathing, like forgetting.