What the Tide Leaves

The shore keeps only what the sea discards— a bottle's throat, a comb with three teeth missing, the blue-black mussel shell that held its silence too long and split.

My grandmother's hands moved like that water, sorting through whatever washed up: buttons, coins, a child's name repeated until it lost its meaning.

I watched her keep things no one else would keep. She said the broken ones remember what whole things never had to learn.

Now I walk the tideline after storms and understand her silence— how to carry something cracked without calling it ruined, how to love the edge where something ended.