Of Salt and Air

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The wind carries what the mouth releases. Breath filtered through one body crosses the distance to touch another — the same air, the same invisible passage. You may not notice.

Miles of silence between us, and still the lungs exchange what the hands cannot hold. I send my longing through the current, the way one sends a letter with no address, trusting the atmosphere to deliver it.

At the shore, water meets the house where I keep watch.

The tide does not knock. It enters. I think of descending into that blue-dark humidity, the ocean's interior — not as disappearance but as return. Salt from my eyes meets salt from the deep.

There is no boundary where grief becomes sea. The land beneath me softens with each wave, each slow wearing-away, and I let it.

I am learning that erosion is not loss.

It is the earth remembering it was once water.

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