Salt Memoir

The tide keeps its own accounts— each wave a ledger line drawn back before the sum is settled, leaving only the residue of kelp and a trembling script of foam.

I watched my mother stand ankle-deep in October surf, her dress darkening at the hem like a wick finding oil. She said the sea was the one honest thing, that it never pretended to stay.

Now I collect what the water abandons: a whelk shell worn to a whisper, driftwood the color of old piano keys, stones so smooth they've forgotten what it was to have edges.

There is a grammar to erosion— the way a cliff learns to bow, the way a name cut into wet sand holds its shape for exactly one breath before the tongue of the shore erases it.

I am learning that slowness is its own form of devotion, that the salt which stiffens my hair was someone else's ocean once, carried here on a wind I'll never thank.