Archive of Tides

At the coast the library is a leaning shack with salt in the hinges and kelp on the roof, where the tide comes to borrow its own names and returns them rinsed, half-legible.

A gull drags a ribbon of plastic like a banner through a sky that smells of iron and rain. I write in the sand, the page that erases itself, each line a small boat loosening its rope.

Evening unpacks its crates of blue glass, light clinking against the rocks. In the shiver of reeds, the old maps breathe, paper lungs filling with the dark.

When the moon lifts the water by its hem the shoreline steps back, a patient witness. We keep a shelf for what we can't keep: the whispering foam, the rumor of tomorrow.