Cartography of the Salt Wind

The saltworks wake before the sun, pans of glass collecting the low blue of morning. Wind skims them like a hand over a harp, teasing a thin, metallic hymn.

I walk the berm where brine meets earth, my boots crusted with last week's weather. Flocks of gulls write sudden commas in the air, and silence closes around each mark.

A cartographer once slept here in a shack of tin, mapping the way thirst learns to sing. His charts were made of creases and candle smoke, the coast re-drawn by every gust.

Now I carry a jar of that wind home, uncap it at my table, let it breathe. The room fills with a distant taste of sun and the memory of water becoming itself.