What the Tide Leaves Behind

The tide pulls back its gray hem and leaves behind a line of wrack— kelp, shell, the spine of something that once held its shape against current.

My grandmother kept a jar of sand from a beach that no longer exists. The shore eroded quietly, over years, the way a name fades from a headstone before anyone notices it's gone.

I think of what survives the washing: not the bright things, not the whole things, but the dense and small— a seed pearl, a tooth, a coin worn to its essential roundness.

Even grief, given enough water and time, loses its edges. What remains you carry in your pocket without knowing, smooth as any ordinary stone.