The sea keeps no records
of the steps we take upon its shore,
yet carries everything
we leave behind.
A word spoken into wind.
A name drawn briefly in sand.
A promise made beside the water
before the tide returned.
It remembers differently.
Not in dates,
or maps,
or photographs fading in a drawer,
but in the pull of a current,
the shape of a wave,
and the salt that remains
long after the journey ends.
Perhaps that is why
we return to the coast.
Not to find what was lost,
but to stand again
beside something
that never truly forgot.