Salt on the Skin, Echoes in the Tide

The sun is a heavy, golden weight against my shoulders, melting the salt from my skin into a thin film of memory.
I stand upon these jagged stones—gray teeth biting at the sea—waiting for a ghost that refuses to depart. The waves do not ask permission to break; they simply arrive, erase, and retreat, much like the words I swallowed in that crowded train station last autumn.
My hand rises to my lips, tracing the curve of a secret I can no longer keep from myself. It is the bitterness of youth: knowing exactly what you want while watching it dissolve into the horizon. Yet, there is healing in this heat. The wind tugs at my hair, a restless phantom pulling me toward something unseen.
I am not waiting for him to return. I am learning to exist in the space between his absence and my own presence. In this moment, under the dying light of a day that tasted of brine and longing, I realize: love is not the arrival. It is the quiet, steady pulse of staying when the tide pulls away.

Editor: Summer Cicada