What the Salt Knows

The tide does not apologize for what it erases. Each withdrawal a white fringe unraveling from shore.

My grandmother kept a jar of sea-glass on the sill above the sink, green and milk and blue — stones that had forgotten they were ever sharp.

Some mornings I press my palm to cold window glass and imagine the ocean pressing back from the other side, unhurried, salt-heavy, certain.

The waves do not know they are the same waves. They arrive anyway, carrying everything they were given, laying it down without grief.