Cartography of Salt

The estuary holds two kinds of water— one that forgot the mountains it came from, one that never stopped tasting the sea. Where they meet, a third thing forms, brackish, unnamed.

My grandmother's hands were like that: city-flour and garden-clay folded together so long she couldn't say anymore which was asking and which was giving.

I used to think forgetting was the wound. Now I think it's the thing the body does before it can hold something new— the way a shore must be remade each time the tide withdraws.

Somewhere the charts mark this region warning: depth unreliable, bottom shifting. Sailors note it and pass through. The birds that nest here don't care what the charts say.