Salt Dialects

The tide has a grammar no one taught it— subject, verb, the long dissolve of object into foam. I stood at the edge once and heard it conjugate the rocks into something almost soft.

My grandmother spoke a dialect that died with the fishing boats, vowels wide as harbors, consonants that clicked like mussels pried open on a kitchen stone.

There are languages the body keeps after the mouth forgets: the salt-sting behind the eyes, the way hands curl around a absent cup, the leaning into wind that isn't there.

I have been translating all my life— wave to word, word to wave, each version losing something the original never knew it held. The sea does not mourn its grammar.

It simply speaks again.