What the Salt Remembers

The tide pulls back its hem and leaves the shore exposed— grey stones blinking in the sudden light like eyes that have not slept.

My grandmother kept a jar of sea glass on the kitchen sill. Aquamarine, milk-white, one piece the color of old amber. She never said where it came from. The light passed through it anyway.

Some things are made smooth by the very force that breaks them. The wave does not apologize. The glass does not remember the bottle.

I have stood at enough shores to know the water goes nowhere— it only changes what it carries, returns a little less than what it took.

Now the jar sits in my kitchen. I hold a piece of amber to the window. The light comes through. I don't know what I'm looking for, only that I keep looking.