Salt Geometry

The cliff face holds its argument in layers— sandstone, then shale, then a seam of white where an ancient sea pressed its mouth against the earth and left only this: a signature in salt.

I have watched the rain undo what took ten thousand quiet years to build, each droplet carrying a crystal down to the creek that knows nothing of patience, only direction.

There is a language in the way stone splits, how it follows the grain of its own making, fractures along the line where heat once met cold and neither would give.

My grandmother kept a jar of river pebbles on her kitchen sill. She said they were letters she hadn't learned to read yet— smooth vowels, consonants with edges still intact, whole sentences worn to gesture.

Tonight the wind is sanding the bluff again. I press my palm against the exposed stratum and feel the faint vibration of a world still deciding what shape it wants to keep.