Salt Memoir

The tide keeps its own counsel, dragging shells into a language only the kelp can parse.

I stood where the jetty crumbles and watched the horizon swallow a tanker whole, the way a throat closes around a name you haven't said in years.

There is a kind of salt that has nothing to do with water — the bright sting behind the eyes when a song finds the frequency of some unguarded room in you.

My grandmother kept jars of sea glass on a windowsill that faced east. Each morning the light passed through them like a rumor through a small town, coloring everything it touched.

I am learning to hold what the waves return — not the thing itself but the shape of its going, the foam where it was.