What the Salt Flats Remember

The white plain holds the shape of the sea that left it. Every crystal a word the water said once and refused to take back.

A woman crosses in the afternoon heat, her shadow stretched thin as a rumor. She is looking for the place where the ground gives a little, where something below still moves.

Miles away, the mountains are the color of old photographs. They do not come closer. The air between them and her is not empty — it is everything that has already happened.

At dusk the flat turns rose, then ash. She makes a mark with her heel and the salt closes over it the way a name closes over the person who carried it.