Salt Lessons

The tide pulls back its offering and the sand remembers nothing, or remembers everything at once — each grain a small, completed world.

I walked here once with someone whose name the water took. We pressed our footprints deep as if the shore were listening, as if it cared to hold the shape of us.

Now the kelp arrives in cursive, illegible and bright, draped across the rocks like letters from a country that no longer exists.

What the ocean teaches is not patience but release — the way a wave will carry every sharp thing far enough to make it smooth.

I stand where the salt meets the last dry edge of land and practice the old art of letting what I love become the water.