Salt Diary

The tide keeps a journal in kelp and broken glass, each entry salted, each revision swallowed before the ink sets.

I found a door handle on the beach once, brass gone green as a bruise healing, and wondered what room it had closed behind it, what argument it had muffled with its click.

The ocean does not curate. It takes the wedding ring and the bottlecap alike, tumbles them until they forget the hands that held them, then offers them back as smooth, nameless things.

My grandmother pressed violets into envelopes she never mailed. I found them decades later, flat as breath held too long, their color a rumor of purple.

Some losses arrive so gently you mistake them for afternoon light shifting across the table — by the time you notice, the shape of what was there has already changed.