Salt Liturgy

The tide pulls its white vestments back across the rocks, unhurried, the way a hand withdraws from a table after sliding a letter forward.

What the sea leaves behind: a fringe of bladderwrack, one sandal, the faint percussion of water still draining through broken shells.

I have stood here before in a different body, smaller, certain the horizon was a seam I could unpick if I swam far enough.

Now I know the salt enters us the way music does — through the tender architecture of the ear, dissolving what it touches into listening.

The gulls wheel and settle, wheel and settle, stitching the grey air shut. Somewhere underneath, the stones are learning a new shape by rote.