What the Tide Keeps

The sea does not remember the names of the drowned. It rolls its shoulders and goes on, salt indifferent as a closed eye.

Still, something returns with each wave — a splinter of wood, a coin worn faceless, the particular weight of a morning.

You pressed your ear to the shore and heard your grandmother's voice, or thought you did, which is the same.

The tide does not grieve what it carries. It simply carries — stone and thread and light, everything softened into almost-nothing.

We are the ones who insist on meaning, who crouch at the waterline naming what washes up, mistaking persistence for remembrance.