What the Salt Teaches

The tide does not apologize for what it takes— a child's shoe, a century of names, the soft geography of a low shore.

We came here every August when the word father still meant a specific pair of hands, a specific way of going quiet.

Now I stand at the same edge, water filling my footprints before I've even lifted the next foot, and I understand the lesson was never about the sea.

The salt air carries everything and keeps nothing— this is its one mercy, the way it lets grief smell briefly like arrival.