Salt Cathedral at Low Tide

At dawn the sea unbuttons its dark coat, leaving the shore in pearl and rust. Barnacles lift their small white mouths to light, and ropes of kelp write cursive over stone.

I walk where water was, through rooms the tide forgot to lock: a cracked bowl, a gull feather, the clean spine of a fish, each object ringing softly in the wind.

Far out, the buoys toll like patient bells. Their voices fold into my ribs, where old grief has been storing rain. Even silence tastes of iron and salt.

By noon the horizon gathers itself, and the returning water climbs each stair of sand. What I cannot keep, it keeps moving, polishing every edge until it sings.