What the Tide Keeps

The sea does not grieve what it takes. A shoe, a letter, the name you called out into the blue corridor of morning — all of it swallowed without ceremony, without the courtesy of witness.

I have stood at the edge of that argument long enough to learn: the water is not cruel, only indifferent, the way a clock face turns from the hour the moment you stop looking.

Still, I come back to the shoreline, to the foam that hisses over stones and retreats like a sentence someone thought better of — leaving only the glistening.

What remains is not the thing itself but the shape of where it was: a damp impression in sand, already filling with smaller water, already almost gone.