The Tidal Archive

At the edge of the harbor, a lighthouse keeps its ledger, white paint flaking like salt on an old tongue, each wave a thumbprint pressed into the stone, each night a page turned with a wind-dark hand.

The sea brings in its shipments of silver weed, of glass buoys, of letters without stamps, and the keeper reads by a lamp that smells of kerosene, hearing the gulls argue over the margins.

Inside, shelves are stacked with jars of brine, labels written in a script the tide can revise, names of storms, names of departures, names of the names we forgot to keep.

When morning arrives, it rinses the ink clean, and the lighthouse begins again, patient as driftwood, cataloging the light, the silt, the mute horizons, storing the blue in a room no one locks.