Salt Museum

In the abandoned salt works past the coastal road the walls have grown a second skin, white crystals feathering each surface like the ghost of every wave that ever gave itself to evaporation.

A docent's placard, curled and foxed, explains the chemistry of brine— how patience and a shallow pan can make the sea confess its bones. I read it twice and still taste nothing.

There are rooms here built for drying, long troughs where the harvest pooled and stiffened. Now swallows nest in the rafters, stitching the dim air with hunger, their cries small and clean as crystals.

Outside, the flats stretch to a haze where water was and will be again. A man stands ankle-deep, raking what the tide has left behind— ordinary treasure, ordinary loss.

I pocket a flake from the windowsill, press it to my tongue and let it bloom. The whole sea opens for a moment, then closes, the way all distances resolve into the body, and dissolve.