Salt Kingdom, After the Fever
Salt Kingdom, After the Fever
Morning fractures across the flats:
amber poured into every hollow.
Reeds stand blackened and fragile,
their husks whispering to wind.
The tide has withdrawn to a thin confession,
leaving salt crusted like frost
along the shore’s tired lip.
Gulls tilt on invisible currents,
their cries thinning into distance.
My bare feet sink:
sand tasting faintly of rust and old rain.
Once we came here fevered,
our shadows longer than our patience.
Salt stiffened in your hair
like a crown you did not ask to wear.
We believed the water would keep us:
that its pulse could outlast our own.
But brine remembers only brine.
It keeps no names.
Now I stand at the seam:
sand dissolving into salt,
salt dissolving into air –
each grain a ledger of departure.
Still, something returns.
A shimmer along the horizon.
A breathing under the crust.
The body, salted and unkinged,
listens for the tide
to speak again.
