Salt Ledger

The tide keeps its own accounts— each wave a column of arrival, each withdrawal a settled debt no one remembers signing.

I found a jar of sea glass on my grandmother's shelf, every piece worn to the shape of something it could never say, green and amber and the blue of almost.

She told me the ocean doesn't break things. It only holds them longer than we're willing to wait.

Now the shelf is bare. The house belongs to strangers who have painted the kitchen yellow and do not know what the windows were for.

I walk the shore at low tide, reading what the salt has written— a ledger of small surrenders, each one polished into something we might call beautiful.