Cartography of a Forgotten Shore

The tide has no memory of the boats it swallowed. Only the sand keeps a record — in the language of impressions, each hollow deepening before it vanishes.

I walked that shore once with a name in my mouth like a stone turned smooth by wanting. The gulls were indifferent, which was a comfort. The horizon offered nothing, which was also a comfort.

What we call forgetting is only this: the chart redrawn around the thing we cannot bring ourselves to mark — a white space where the water was too cold, where something went down without witness.

Somewhere a lighthouse still turns in a sea that no longer requires its warning. The light crosses the water anyway, faithful to its single, useless task, sweeping and sweeping the dark clean.