Cartography of Salt

The estuary holds its name badly, spilling it into the reeds the way a sick man forgets the word for window while staring through glass.

We drove the coast road in August, the salt crust whitening the car hood, your hand loose on the door armrest as if testing whether you needed it. The radio dissolved into static before the bridge.

I have since learned to read tidal charts— how water refuses to stay where the map says, how the land it abandons still holds the shape of its leaving, a negative of something that was not solid.

You sent a letter from the town with the old lighthouse. No return address. The postmark blurred. I keep it in the drawer where I put things I am not yet willing to understand.

At low tide the flats go gray and enormous, birds I cannot name picking through the remnant. Everything the sea held briefly is briefly returned.