Salt Diary

The tide keeps a journal in foam and drift, each entry dissolved before the next wave can read what the last one meant.

I found a conch at the wrack line, its spiral still humming with the argument between calcium and time— how long a house can stand after its architect has gone.

There are mornings the bay is so still it holds the clouds like a developing photograph, and I almost believe permanence is something the water invented to keep us coming back.

But the salt knows better. It has tasted every river's confession, carried it past the continental shelf, and set it down in the dark where pressure makes a new language of stone.

I write your name in the wet sand not because I think it will last, but because the erasing is the most honest part.