Salt Lessons

The tide left its alphabet on the rocks last night, cursive lines of kelp and broken shell, a language I almost remember from some older version of my mouth.

My grandmother kept jars of sea glass on a windowsill that faced the wrong direction. She said the ocean writes its best letters to people who have stopped expecting mail.

I have been collecting salt my whole life— in the creases of folded maps, in the white rind of a August sweat, in the way a word can dry and still taste like where it came from.

There is a beach I will never return to where the sand was so fine it behaved like water, pouring through my fingers twice, once as earth, once as time.

I am learning what the tide already knows: that the best way to hold a shape is to let the waves unmake you every six hours, every six hours, and begin again with the raw mouth of morning.