What the Salt Remembers

The tide pulls back its hem of foam and leaves the sand dark, open, shining— a wound that closes as you watch.

My grandmother kept a jar of ocean water on the windowsill until it clouded, until whatever had been sea became mere mineral, a residue of somewhere else.

She said the salt remembers the shape of waves even after the water has gone. I don't know if that's true. I know her hands still make the gesture of scattering grain over bread.

Some things we carry without vessels: the specific gray of a February morning, the way a voice moves through a house long after the house itself is rubble, long after the voice has learned other rooms.

The jar is gone now. The window too. But somewhere the ocean is still pulling its dark hem back, still leaving that brief, wet evidence of return.