Low Tide Inventory

The bay pulls back its grey sheet and the world it was hiding holds still— a bicycle wheel cataloged in barnacles, the green hour of bottles, a shoe that forgot whose hurry it was.

Gulls do the accounting overhead, calling out figures no one signs for. The mud keeps everything in its ledger of brown, every footprint a debt the next wave promises to forgive.

I walk the seam where land lost its argument, collecting nothing, only looking, the way you read a letter addressed to someone you used to be, the handwriting almost yours.

Somewhere out past the sandbar the tide is already turning back, gathering its sheet again, ready to cover this honest hour with the polite blue lie of depth.