Tides at the Edge of Remembering

The waves return what they promised to take— smooth stones, a shell, the name written in foam that dissolves before the eye can hold it.

I wade to my knees in the cold claim of things, watching the light break apart in the shallow water, each shard a moment I cannot keep.

The tide remembers more than I do: it brings back the sand from yesterday's shore, the weight of a thousand tomorrows compressed into the sound of receding breath.

What returns is never what left. What remains is the taste of salt on lips that cannot stop asking the ocean to speak the language it speaks to itself.