Salt Diary

The tide keeps a journal in kelp and broken glass, each entry erased by the next slow page. I found a word once, pressed in wet sand— someone's name, maybe, or a small command the ocean chose not to obey.

There are houses along this coast whose windows have turned the color of milk. The women who hung curtains there are grandmothers now, or dust, and still the salt finds every hinge.

I have been keeping my own record: a jar of water from each place I've slept near shore. They look the same on the shelf— clear, still, ordinary— but hold them to your ear and each one lies differently.

My grandmother said the sea remembers everything the land tries to forget. She said it in a kitchen smelling of dill, her hands white with flour, and I believed her the way children believe weather.

Now I stand where the water pulls back like a breath before speaking. It has something to tell me in that old language of erasure— how to mean something without lasting.