What the Tide Carries Back

The sea does not forget a name. It turns it over in its mouth for years, smoothing the consonants to something softer, something that sounds like breathing.

My grandmother kept a jar of black sand on the windowsill beside the fern. She never told me where it came from, only that some places stay inside you long after your feet have dried.

I have stood at the edge of water and thrown nothing in— just watched the light break itself apart across the surface, endlessly willing to be remade.

At low tide the shore gives back what it has held in secret: brown glass, a buckle, the skeleton of something that once knew how to float. The sea is not cruel. It is only honest about what it cannot keep.