What the Salt Remembers

The tide pulls everything toward forgetting— shells ground to white dust, names carved in driftwood carried off by noon.

Still the salt stays. It passes through kelp, through herring, through the hands of the woman who filleted them every morning for forty years.

Her kitchen smelled of iron and brine. The window over the sink held the harbor like a painting that changed with the light and never once asked to be seen.

Now her hands are in the ground near the church. The harbor is still doing its slow work, consuming the pier plank by plank.

But the salt is patient. It does not mourn what it passes through— only carries it, only continues.