What Low Tide Leaves

The water unclenches its fist by morning and the bay lays out its small confessions: a comb of bone, a bottle green as envy, the slow brass coin of a jellyfish already forgetting it was ever a bell.

Children read the sand like a torn page, fingers spelling the names of buried things, while the gulls audit the wreckage overhead, counting what the night could not keep down, arguing the price of everything wet and bright.

I came here to give something back— a word I had carried too long in the mouth, heavy as a stone polished by saying. The sea took it the way it takes all errands: without thanks, without turning to look.

By afternoon the tide returns to claim its archive of glitter and rope and rind, folding the shoreline shut like a ledger. What stayed, stayed only to be unmade. What left, the water never called a loss.