What the Tide Leaves

The sea does not remember what it takes. Only the shore holds proof — a shell worn to the color of old teeth, a bottle green as drowned light.

My grandmother's hands moved like that, unhurried, sifting through what remained: buttons, receipts, a photograph still damp at the corners.

Nothing insists on itself the way grief does, how it presses through the mesh of ordinary days until you taste salt at breakfast, at nothing in particular.

The tide withdraws and the sand shines briefly, rearranged, holding the shape of what was there the way a bed holds warmth after the sleeper has gone.