What the Salt Knows

The tide doesn't remember the shore it shaped— only the pulling, only the return, the cold arithmetic of water against stone.

My grandmother's hands smelled of brine long after she'd left the coast, as though the sea had signed her somewhere deeper than skin.

I keep finding her in small defeats: a jar lid that won't yield, the particular way flour settles after you sift it— a cloud falling into itself.

The salt doesn't mourn the fish. The net doesn't grieve the catch. But I am neither salt nor net, and the thing I carry keeps finding its own weight.

Somewhere a wave breaks that no one will ever name. The shore accepts it. The shore accepts everything.