Salt Meridian

The tide keeps its own hours, pulling the sandbar into a crescent that was not there at dawn.

I stood where the kelp line darkened, ankle-deep in the hush between waves, and felt the planet turning beneath me like a wheel finding its groove.

There is a latitude the body remembers — the salt smell, the way light fractures across a swell before it folds into glass.

Somewhere a foghorn leans its one low syllable into the grey. The gulls circle and circle as if stitching the air shut.

I have carried this coastline inland, its cold meridian drawn through every landlocked room, every glass of still water trembling at the rim.