Salt Lectures

The tide keeps its own hours, dragging its chalk across the rocks until every ledge is smooth as a closed eye.

I found a mussel shell this morning hinged open like a book left facedown, its nacre still catching what light the fog allowed through.

There is a patience in salt water I have never learned — the way it enters every fracture without force, dissolves the stonework of a century in a single phrase.

My grandmother kept a jar of sea glass on the kitchen sill. She said the ocean was the only editor worth trusting: it takes what is sharp and returns it worth holding.

Tonight the waves are lecturing again, their syllables collapsing into foam. I am trying to sit still long enough to hear what they erase.