What the Salt Remembers

The tide pulls back and leaves its grammar on the stone — a white cursive neither read nor meant to last.

My grandmother's hands smelled of brine, of fish wrapped in yesterday's news, of a country that closed like a fist before I was born.

I have tried to carry water in my palms, to show someone what the sea once said — but the body forgets faster than it mourns, faster than maps are redrawn.

Somewhere a shore rehearses the same farewell ten thousand times a morning. The salt does not call it loss. It calls it return.